Saturday, February 12, 2011

Chapter 12: Social Desirability Bias

Response Bias

 

Social Desirability Bias


-          Over reported

o   Being a good citizen

o   Being well informed and cultured

o   Fulfilling moral and social responsibilities

-          Under reported

o   Illness and disabilities

o   Illegal or contranormative behaviour

o   Financial status

 

Types of SDB


-          Impression management

o   Need for approval

-          Ego defense and self deception

-          Instrumentation

o   Answers designed to bring about socially desirable outcome

 

Dealing with SDB


-          Removing interviewer

-          Random response technique

o   Developed by Warner

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_response

 

o   Approach limited to providing an estimate among total sample

o   Therefore cannot cross analyse

-          Face saving questions

o   Have you had time to register to votes

o   Vs

o   Have you registered to vote

-          Indirect questioning

-          Question enhancements

o   Reassure that behaviour is not unusual

o   Extended responses on prompts

§  Extend categories so mildly heavy drinking is in middle of range

§  Or

§  Wide groups, so amount not identified too closely

o   Identify responses by code

o   Bogus pipeline


Determining Whether SDB Exists


-          Matched cells  à ie, do sample test with direct question

-          Matching known facts

-          Checking against measures with known SDB

-          Rating the question for social desirability

-          Noting physiological manifestations of unease

-           

 

 

 

 

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