Asking sensitive questions: The effects of type of referent and frequency wording in counterbiasing methods

When and why is ease of retrieval informative?

“…Previous research has indicated that the estimation of frequency judgments has a subjective element affected by the context in which such information is elicited (Blair & Burton, 1987;Burton & Blair, 1991;Menon, 1993Menon, , 1997Menon et al, 1995Menon et al, , 1997Raghubir & Menon, 1996;Schwarz, 1990Schwarz, , 1998Winkielman & Schwarz, 2001;Winkielman et al, 1998). In the domain of ease of retrieval, Aarts and Dijksterhuis (1999) showed that when people were asked to recall eight instances of destinations that they had gone to using a bicycle (a difficult task), they estimated that they had used their bicycle less often than they did when they were asked to only recall three instances (an easy task).…”

Food Acquisition Practices Used by Food-Insecure Individuals When They Are Concerned About Having Sufficient Food for Themselves and Their Households

“…28 Through this technique of counter-biasing the information, social desirability response bias could be reduced. 29 Our use of such a large population-based cohort is a significant strength of the study. Use of an EFP is indicative of food insecurity and targeting our efforts to this population ensured the presence of a large sample size from which to gather information on food acquisition practices.…”

Factors influencing unhealthy eating behaviour in US adolescents

“…For example, respondents were told ‘It's very common to eat unhealthy foods’, ‘In fact, a considerable number of people eat unhealthy foods’, etc. Counter‐biasing methods aim to decrease the ego‐defensive tendency to respond in a socially normative manner (Sudman and Bradburn, 1974) and is shown to lower social desirability bias in health‐related research (Raghubir and Menon, 1996). To determine how each variable contributes to the current maintenance of unhealthy eating behaviour, recall estimates of perceived social and cognitive influences were assessed, as well as actual estimates of unhealthy eating behaviour.…”