Abstract
Abstract. Many investigators have noted “reverse-coding” method factors when exploring response pattern structure with psychological inventory data. The current article probes for the existence of a confound in these investigations, whereby an item’s level of saturation with socially desirable content tends to covary with the item’s substantive scale keying. We first investigate its existence, demonstrating that 15 of 16 measures that have been previously implicated as exhibiting a reverse-scoring method effect can also be reasonably characterized as exhibiting a scoring key/social desirability confound. A second set of analyses targets the extent to which the confounding variable may confuse interpretation of factor analytic results and documents strong social desirability associations. The results suggest that assessment developers perhaps consider the social desirability scale value of indicators when constructing scale aggregates (and possibly scales when investigating inter-construct associations). Future investigations would ideally disentangle the confound via experimental manipulation.
References *Measures and data were included in the current manuscript procedure.
2010). Much more than model fitting? Evidence for the heritability of method effect associated with positively worded items of the Life Orientation Test Revised. Structural Equation Modeling, 17, 642–653. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2010.510064
(2009). Self-enhancement and self-protection: What they are and what they do. European Review of Social Psychology, 20, 1–48.
(1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63, 1–18.
(1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York, NY: Holt.
(2000). Effects of stem and Likert response option reversals on survey internal consistency: If you feel the need, there is a better alternative to using those negatively worded stems. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 60, 361–370.
(1984). Yea-saying, nay-saying, and going to extremes: Black-white differences in response styles. Public Opinion Quarterly, 48, 491–509.
(2009). Five-factor inventories have a major general factor related to social desirability which can be reduced by framing items neutrally. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 335–344.
(*2004). Methodological challenges in union commitment studies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 738–747.
(2000). Self-categorization, affective commitment, and group self-esteem as distinct aspects of social identity in the organization. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 555–577.
(2001). The validity of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale an updated literature review. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 52, 69–77.
(1995). The development of a clinician‐administered PTSD scale. Journal of traumatic stress, 8, 75–90.
(1989). Descriptive consistency and social desirability in self and peer reports. European Journal of Personality, 3, 31–45.
(2014). Development and validation of Aon Hewitt’s personality model and Adaptive Employee Personality Test (ADEPT-15). New York, NY: Aon Hewitt.
(2003). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire: Multiple factors or method effects? Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41, 1411–1426. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(03)00059-7
(1992). Psychometric properties of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire in a clinical anxiety disorders sample. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 30, 33–37.
(2015). Impact of electronic warnings on online personality scores and test-taker reactions in an applicant simulation. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 163–172.
(*2013). The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale: A review with a theoretical and empirical examination of item content and factor structure. PLoS One, 8, e58067
(2010). Psychometric properties and latent structure of the Portuguese version of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 13, 431–443. https://doi.org/10.1017/S113874160000398X
(2013). Effects of negative keying and wording in attitude measures: A mixed-methods study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA.
(2004). Comparing traditional and Rasch analyses of the Mississippi PTSD Scale: Revealing limitations of reverse-scored items. Journal of Applied Measurement, 5, 15–30.
(1980). New work attitude measures of trust, organizational commitment and personal need non-fulfilment. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 53, 39–52.
(2009). Personality correlates of method effects due to negatively worded items on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 46, 309–313.
(2012). Not too little, but not too much: The perceived desirability of responses to personality items. Journal of Research in Personality, 46, 8–18.
(1953). The relationship between the judged desirability of a trait and the probability that the trait will be endorsed. Journal of Applied Psychology, 37, 90–93.
(1957). The social desirability variable in personality assessment and research. New York, NY: Dryden.
(1961).
(Instincts and their vicissitudes . In J. StracheyEd., The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 111–142). London, UK: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1915).2009). Longitudinal factorial invariance of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: Determining the nature of method effects due to item wording. Journal of Research in Personality, 47, 406–416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.03.011
(1980). Commitment to the union: Development of a measure and an examination of its correlates. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65, 479–499.
(2003). Item-wording and the dimensionality of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: Do they matter? Personality and Individual Differences, 35, 1241–1254. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00331-8
(*2009). Union leadership and member attitudes: A multi-level analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 392–410.
(2009). Small-sample robust estimators of noncentrality-based and incremental model fit. Structural Equation Modeling, 61, 1–27.
(2001). Manual for the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina.
(1988). Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Three studies in reliability and validity. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 85–90.
(2009). A conceptual and empirical reexamination of the measurement of the social desirability of items: Implications for detecting desirable response style and scale development. Personnel Psychology, 62, 201–228.
(2012). Method effects: The problem with negatively versus positively keyed items. Journal of Personality Assessment, 94, 196–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2011.645936
(1980). Applications of item response theory to practical testing problems. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
(1996). A confirmatory factor analysis examination of reverse coding effects in Meyer and Allen’s Affective and Continuance Commitment Scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 56, 241–250.
(2002). Dimensionality of Cook and Wall’s (1980) British Organizational Commitment Scale revisited. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 75, 369–375. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317902320369767
(1983). Social desirability scales: More substance than style. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 51, 882–888.
(2005). The role of item extremity in the emergence of keying-related factors: an exploration with the life orientation test. Psychological methods, 10, 120–131. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.10.1.120
(2012). The two-factor solution to Allen and Meyer’s (1990) affective commitment scale: Effects of negatively worded items. Journal of Business and Psychology, 27, 421–436.
(1990). Development and validation of the Penn state worry questionnaire. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 28, 487–495.
(2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1321.
(1999). Reflections on the study and relevance of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 8, 387–401.
(1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 224–247.
(2013). Evaluation of the factor structure of the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale in older adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 54, 153–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.08.009
(2003). Examining the structure of the trait meta-mood scale. Australian Journal of Psychology, 55, 154–158.
(2012).
(Classic self-deception revisited . In S. StracheyT. D. WilsonEds., Handbook of self-knowledge (pp. 363–378). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.1967). Trait inferences: Evaluative and descriptive aspects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025230
(1974). Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59, 603–609.
(1976). A generalization of the probit and logit methods for dose response curves. Biometrics, 32, 761–768.
(2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from https//www.R-project.org/
. (1977). The CES-D Scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385–401.
(1992). A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19, 303.
(1965). Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSE). Acceptance and commitment therapy. Measures package, 61, 52.
(1979). Conceiving the self. New York, NY: Basic Books.
(2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1–36.
(1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition and personality, 9, 185–211.
(1995). Emotional attention, clarity, and repair: Exploring emotional intelligence using the Trait Meta-Mood scale. Emotion, Disclosure, and Health, 125, 125–154.
(2009). Sample heterogeneity and the measurement structure of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale. Social Indicators Research, 94, 273–296. https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11205-008-9423-4
(1994). Distinguishing optimism from neuroticism (and trait anxiety, self-mastery, and self-esteem): A re-evaluation of the Life Orientation Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1063–1078.
(1995). An exploratory and confirmatory factor-analytic investigation of item wording effects on the obtained factor structures of survey questionnaire measures. Journal of Management, 21, 1177–1193.
(1985). Factors defined by negatively keyed items: The result of careless respondents? Applied Psychological Measurement, 9, 367–373.
(1981). Controlling acquiescence response bias by item reversals: The effect on questionnaire validity. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 41, 1101–1114.
(1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 420–428.
(2002). Substance versus style: A new look at social desirability in motivating contexts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 211–219.
(1983). Assessment of anger: The state-trait anger scale. Advances in Personality Assessment, 2, 159–187.
(1963). Manual for the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire-Form XII: An experimental revision. Columbus, OH: Bureau of Business Research, College of Commerce and Administration, Ohio State University.
(*2007). Measures of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, mental health and job-related well-being: A benchmarking manual (2nd ed.). West Sussex, UK: Wiley.
(1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193–210.
(2013). Explaining method effects associated with negatively worded items in trait and state global and domain-specific self-esteem scales. Structural Equation Modeling, 20, 299–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705511.2013.769394
(1984).
(Cognitive sciences and survey methods . In T. B. JabineM. L. StrafJ. M. TanurR. TourangeauEds., Cognitive aspects of survey methodology: Building a bridge between disciplines (pp. 73–100). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.1988). Cognitive processes underlying context effects in attitude measurement. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 299–314.
(2009). Do balanced scales assess bipolar constructs? The case of the STAI scales. Psychological Assessment, 21, 187–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015312
(2012). Misresponse to reversed and negated items in surveys: A review. JMR, Journal of Marketing Research, 49, 737–747.
(2013). Reversed item bias: An integrative model. Psychological Methods, 18, 320–334.
(2003). Do reverse-worded items confound measures in cross-cultural consumer research? The case of the Material Values Scale. Journal of Consumer Research, 30, 72–91. https://doi.org/10.1086/374697
(2012). Wording effects and the factor structure of the Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale in HIV/AIDS patients on antiretroviral treatment in South Africa. PLoS One, 7, e34881. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034881
(2017). Choosing prediction over explanation in psychology: Lessons from machine learning. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 1100–1122.
(2011). Applicant faking: A look into the black box. The Industrial and Organizational Psychologist, 49, 29–36.
(1983). The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 67, 361–370.
(