Social desirability bias: A neglected aspect of validity testing

A tremendous growth in the use of multi-item scales in marketing research has occurred over the past two decades. Concurrently, there is increasing concern about the quality of these measures. Although the majority of marketing-related articles now discuss the reliability of the scales administered, few address the issue of scale validity. One aspect of scale validity, which should be of particular concern to marketing researchers, is the potential threat of contamination due to social-desirability response bias. However, a careful review of nearly 20 years of published research suggests that social-desirability bias has been consistently neglected in scale construction, evaluation, and implementation. The purpose of this article is to discuss the nature of such a bias, methods for identifying, testing for and/or preventing it, and how these methods can and should be implemented in consumer-related research. ©: 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.