A Relational framework between survey topic, sponsor, and socially desirable responding: an online survey experiment

Abstract

Research in survey methodology indicates that survey attributes, such as topic and sponsor influence survey participation and data quality. This paper primarily aims to examine whether such attributes influence socially desirable responding in an online survey setting, a setting which is less studied in the literature than face-to-face interview settings with regards to social desirability. To achieve this aim, it empirically tests the effects of survey topic, survey sponsor, introduction interest, and perceived topic sensitivity on socially desirable responding (SDR) across a range of items in a questionnaire. The survey experiment is based on a convenience sample of higher education students who filled out an online self-administered questionnaire, which also included a short version of the Marlowe-Crowne SDR scale. The findings showed that the tendency to SDR does not significantly differ by survey topic and sponsor. However, it varies by introduction interest, and intriguingly, more interested respondents demonstrated a higher tendency to SDR. Also, the tendency to SDR marginally differed by the perceived topic sensitivity.