Modeling Motivated Misreports to Sensitive Survey Questions

作者：Boeckenholt Ulf

来源：Psychometrika, 2014, 79(3): 515-537.

DOI：10.1007/s11336-013-9390-9

• response set
• survey research
• socially desirable responding
• self-deceptive enhancement
• item response models

Asking sensitive or personal questions in surveys or experimental studies can both lower response rates and increase item non-response and misreports. Although non-response is easily diagnosed, misreports are not. However, misreports cannot be ignored because they give rise to systematic bias. The purpose of this paper is to present a modeling approach that identifies misreports and corrects for them. Misreports are conceptualized as a motivated process under which respondents edit their answers before they report them. For example, systematic bias introduced by overreports of socially desirable behaviors or underreports of less socially desirable ones can be modeled, leading to more-valid inferences. The proposed approach is applied to a large-scale experimental study and shows that respondents who feel powerful tend to overclaim their knowledge.

• 出版日期2014-7
• 单位西北大学