Correction for faking in self‐report personality tests

Abstract

Faking is a common problem in testing with self-report personality tests, especially in high-stakes situations. A possible way to correct for it is statistical control on the basis of social desirability scales. Two such scales were developed and applied in the present paper. It was stressed that the statistical models of faking need to be adapted to different properties of the personality scales, since such scales correlate with faking to different extents. In four empirical studies of self-report personality tests, correction for faking was investigated. One of the studies was experimental, and asked participants to fake or to be honest. In the other studies, job or school applicants were investigated. It was found that the approach to correct for effects of faking in self-report personality tests advocated in the paper removed a large share of the effects, about 90%. It was found in one study that faking varied as a function of degree of how important the consequences of test results could be expected to be, more high-stakes situations being associated with more faking. The latter finding is incompatible with the claim that social desirability scales measure a general personality trait. It is concluded that faking can be measured and that correction for faking, based on such measures, can be expected to remove about 90% of its effects.

Inside Out: A Scoping Review on the Physical Education Teacher’s Personality

“…Interestingly, the PETs evaluate themselves in a more positive light than their colleagues. This might be due to a generally higher evaluation of oneself by e.g., faking answers in order to appear socially better (Sjöberg, 2015) or because PETs in general possibly come off differently compared to OSTs such as Mantu and Montu’s (2014) results hint for the personality factor extraversion .…”

Ferramenta teórico-metodológica para o estudo dos processos de alfabetização científica em ações de educação não formal e comunicação pública da ciência: resultados e discussões

“…A capacidade de adequação da ferramenta para diferentes ações e objetos de análise, possibilita sua utilização no estudo das intenções e concepções das ações de educação não formal e da comunicação pública da ciência, das práticas concretas e dos públicos envolvidos, possibilitando uma constante reflexão sobre o processo de AC. A ferramenta permite, por exemplo, a superação de alguns desafios da análise do processo AC no público em contextos não formais, como a falta de tempo para preenchimento de questionários ou entrevistas presenciais ou posterior via telefone [Sjöberg, 2015], uma vez que pode ser aplicada na transcrição do diálogo e/ou na codificação de registros audiovisuais de diversas audiências quando participam de ações de comunicação pública da ciência.…”

Using Overt and Covert Items in Self-Report Personality Tests: Susceptibility to Faking and Identifiability of Possible Fakers

“…Social desirability is the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others, rather than how they truly feel or believe ( King and Bruner, 2000 ). Elevate scores to social desirability scales have been taken as an indication of possible faking ( van de Mortel, 2008 ), and “corrections” have been proposed that remove the effects of social desirability from personality test scores ( Goffin and Christiansen, 2003 ; Sjöberg, 2015 ). However, there is evidence in the literature that social desirability is a poor indicator of faking ( Zickar and Robie, 1999 ; Peterson et al, 2011 ), and that correcting personality test scores on the basis of social desirability does not improve the validity of measures ( Christiansen et al, 1994 ; Ones et al, 1996 ; Ellingson et al, 1999 ).…”