The relationship between social desirability bias and self-reports of health, substance use, and social network factors among urban substance users in Baltimore, Maryland

By C. Latkin, C. Edwards, M. Davey-Rothwell, K. Tobin. Addictive Behaviours, 2017

717 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Social desirability response bias may lead to inaccurate self-reports and erroneous study conclusions. The present study examined the relationship between social desirability response bias and self-reports of mental health, substance use, and social network factors among a community sample of inner-city substance users. Methods The study was conducted in a sample of 591 opiate and cocaine users in Baltimore, Maryland from 2009–2013. Modified items from the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale were included in the survey, which was conducted face-to-face and using Audio Computer Self Administering Interview (ACASI) methods. Results There were highly statistically significant differences in levels of social desirability response bias by levels of depressive symptoms, drug use stigma, physical health status, recent opiate and cocaine use, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores, and size of social networks. There were no associations between health service utilization measures and social desirability bias. In multiple logistic regression models, even after including the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) as a measure of depressive symptomology, social desirability bias was associated with recent drug use and drug user stigma. Social desirability bias was not associated with enrollment in prior research studies. Conclusions These findings suggest that social desirability bias is associated with key health measures and that the associations are not primarily due to depressive symptoms. Methods are needed to reduce social desirability bias. Such methods may include the wording and prefacing of questions, clearly defining the role of “study participant,” and assessing and addressing motivations for socially desirable responses.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f2a05c4a36ac7c84c10ef430b749d966eaaea22

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

• Work-life balance of UK construction workers: relationship with mental health (2020, background): “Secondly, though no correlation was found between shame and perceived risk of disclosing personal information in UK samples (Gilbert et al. 2007), measuring shame using self-report measures might compromise their accuracy (e.g. social desirability bias; Latkin et al. 2017).”
• Theory-Grounded Measurement of U.S. Social Stereotypes in English Language Models (2022, background): “There is tension between asking a participant what they think—which risks a counfounding potential social desirability bias (Latkin et al., 2017) (people’s tendency to respond in socially acceptable ways)—and asking what they think others think—which led to comments from a few partici-”
• Construction And factorial validation of a short version of the Academic Motivation Scale (2021, background): “However, it is acknowledged that there is an ongoing debate on whether motivation can be accurately measured with a self-report scale such as SAMS (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 2001), due to an inherent social desirability bias (Latkin et al., 2017).”