When Does Social Desirability Become a Problem? Detection and Reduction of Social Desirability Bias in Information Systems Research
Abstract
Social desirability (SD) bias occurs in self-report surveys when subjects give socially desirable responses by over- or underreporting their behavior. Despite knowledge of SD as a potential threat to the validity of information systems (IS) research, little has been done to systematically assess its extent. Furthermore, we are uncertain of how to recover reliable estimates of the relationships between research variables contaminated by SD bias. We sought in this study to assess the extent of SD bias in causal inferences when independent and/or dependent variables are contaminated. We also evaluated whether an SD scale in conjunction with partial correlation could effectively and efficiently correct SD bias when it is found. To achieve these purposes, we designed a survey study and collected data from Amazon's Mechanical Turk in the context of mobile loafing, which refers to employees' personal use of the mobile Internet during business hours. Using various detection methods, we found that SD bias existed in the context of mobile loafing. From the results of the variance reduction rate and a covariate technique, we found that SD bias becomes problematic when both the independent and dependent variables are susceptible to SD bias. Overall, our study contributes significantly to the IS literature by revealing the extent of SD bias and the magnitude of the possible correction for it in IS research.
Recommended Citation
Kwak, D. H., Ma, X., & Kim, S. (2021). When Does Social Desirability Become a Problem? Detection and Reduction of Social Desirability Bias in Information Systems Research. Information and Management, 58(7) Elsevier.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2021.103500
Department(s)
Business and Information Technology
Keywords and Phrases
Balanced inventory of desirable responding; Correlation; Covariate technique; Factor mixture model; Indirect questioning; Mobile loafing; Self-report survey; Social desirability bias; Social desirability scale; Variance reduction rate
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0378-7206
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 Elsevier, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Nov 2021
