Treatment Acceptability and “Faking Good”: Are Staff Telling Us What They Think We Want to Hear?

Treatment acceptability refers to how acceptable various treatment alternatives are to individuals who are subjected to and who implement those treatments. While treatment-acceptability research increases in popularity, some have questioned its usefulness. In particular, Schwartz and Baer (1991) question whether staff might be telling us what we want to hear, analogous to the phenomenon of test-takers “faking good” while taking personality tests. In this study, we sought to investigate the possibility of such bias in treatment-acceptability ratings. Direct-care staff at a large residential facility were presented with a clinical vignette and five treatment options to rate. They also received three different types of instructions (standard, “fake good,” and “prompted honesty”) designed to determine whether biases in ratings would appear. Results indicate that, under these conditions, staff do not fake good, i.e., there were no differences across instructional conditions. Collapsing across conditions, staff did differ in their ratings on the five treatment alternatives. Reasons for current results and suggestions for further research are discussed.