Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers • Studies of response accuracy suggest the tendency for respondents to distort answers in ways that will make them look better or will avoid making them look bad

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers Example (Poor reporting) • Studies found the convictions for drunken driving were reported poorly in survey. The explanation for that must be people are reluctant to report such event. That because of the effect of the social desirability

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers Reason to distort the answers • Want to look good or avoiding looking bad. • The answer to some question could actually pose a threat to respondents. Such as drinking alcohol to excess • Managing their own self-image

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers • The problem is not sensitive question is sensitive answers • Question tends to categories as sensitive if a yes answer is likely to be judged by society

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers • Strategies to minimize the effect of social desirability in Data collection • 1. assure confidentiality 2. Emphasizing the importance of Accuracy 3. Reducing the role of interviewer

Assure Confidentiality • Minimizing the use of name • Dissociating identifiers from survey response • Keeping survey forms in locked files • Keeping non-staff people away from completed survey answers • Seeing to the proper disposal of survey instrument

Emphasizing the importance of Accuracy • Interviewers explicitly explain to respondents that giving accurate answers is the most important thing they can do. • Train interviewers to minimize the personal side of their relationship with respondents Trained to reinforce thoughtful answers, and not reinforce behaviors that are inconsistent with giving complete and accurate answers • Respondents are asked to verbally or in writing make a commitment to give accurate answer during the interview.

Reducing the Role of Interviewer • Series of question put in a self-administered form. • Using computer assisted personal interviewing (CAPI). • Using innovative technique such as the one used in National Health Interview Survey

Reducing the Role of Interviewer • Using innovative technique such as the one used in National Health Interview Survey for a study of teen health risk behavior (Respondent listen to questions read on the tape, then record their answers on the answers sheet, without observer, interviewer , or parent knows what questions are being answered.

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers • Strategies to minimize the effect of social desirability in Question Design Option • Increase the respondent ‘s sense that a question is appropriate and necessary in order to achieve the research objective. • Reduce the extent to which respondents feel that the answer put them in the negative light • Minimizing Detailed Answer • Giving Answer in code

Appropriateness of Questions • Researchers should be asking people questions only when there is a clear role for answers in addressing the research questions • the role of the question will increase the willing of answering the question accurately. • Example ( asking about income and health or political survey) • Example( behaviors increase the HIV transmission)

Appropriateness of Questions • A variation on the same theme is that some questions seem inappropriate to certain subset of population • Example( behaviors increase the HIV transmission)

Managing the Meaning of the Answer People’s concerns how they will be classified lead to distort their answers.

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Building an introduction or build a series of questions that minimize the sense that certain answer will be negatively valued. • Example : People tend to overreport their voting because they don’t want look as a not good citizens.

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Did you vote in the presidential election last November? • Sometimes we now that people are not able to vote because they are not interested in the election, because they cant get off the work, because they have family issues or for many reasons. Thinking about presidential election last November did you actually vote in that election or not?

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer Other Example • Did you own a library card? • Many people get books from libraries, others buy their book, subscribe to magazines, or get their reading material in some other way. Do you have a library card now, or not?

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Design a series of questions that enables the respondents to provide perspective n the meaning of answers. • Example: • How many drinks did you have altogether yesterday? their behavior yesterday was not what they consider to be typical

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • On days when you have anything alcoholic to drink at all, how many drinks do you have? • Yesterday, would you say you had more drink than average, less than average, or about the amount to drink? • How many drinks did you have altogether yesterday? • (tell the researcher what the usual pattern)

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Have you seen or talked with the doctor about your health in the last two weeks? • Have you seen or talked with the doctor about your health in the last month? (it turns out that different number of visits to doctors are reported depending on the order in which these question are asked)

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Response task can be designed to structure the respondent perceptions on how their answers will be judged . • In general, would you say that you drink more than your friends, less than your friends, or about the same amount as your friends? • Think about the friend you know who drinks the most? About how many drinks would you say that person usually has? • And how about you? On days when you have any alcoholic beverages , about how many drinks do you usually have?

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Perceived purpose of a question is affected by the subject matter of surrounding questions. • Example the meaning of the alcohol use may seem very different ,depending on whether they follow questions about using cocaine or about diet

Approaches to minimize respondents’ perceptions about their answer • Studies have shown that certain steps are associates with lower risks of heart attacks. We are interested in what people do might affect their risks. For example, in the past 7 days, how many days have you: • Taken any aspirin? • Exercise for at least 20 minutes? • Had at least one glass of wine, can of beer?

Minimizing Detailed Answer Thinking about the level of details in which answers need to be collected is an important part of the question design process.

Minimizing Detailed Answer • Example • To the nearest $1000, what is your annual salary rated? • Is your annual salary rate less than 30,000, between 30,000, 60,000, or over 60,000? • Is it less than 10,000 between 10,000 and 20,000, or over 20,000?

Giving Answer in Code This strategies prevents the researchers , the interviewer , or anyone else from knowing what the respondent’s true answer is

Giving Answer in Code Example (NHIS to estimate the rate at which respondents are risk of AIDS) Is any of these statements true for you? • You have hemophilia and have received clotting function concentrates since 1990? • You are a native Haiti or central Africa, who has entered US since 1990? • You have taken illegal drugs by needle at any time since 1990?

Giving Answer in Code Randomresponse method enable researchers to make estimate of the rates of behaviors or events that are highly socially undesirable or illegal by asking unrelated question

Giving Answer in Code Procedure • Give unrelated two question Example Have you used marijuana in the last month? Is your mother’s birthday in June? Only respondents and not interview will know which question is going to be answered? • Use any random method to assign each respondent to different question

Giving Answer in Code Procedure 3. The answers should be in the form yes/no The interviews will know the answer but they will not know for which question

Giving Answer in Code

Giving Answer in Code Drawbacks • Time consuming • Be credible, the choice of unrelated questions must be carefully thought. • Individual level analyses are impossible (standard error should be based on the people answer the target question)

Reducing the Effect of Social Desirability On Answers