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ABSTRACT
A tremendous growth in the use of multi-item scales in marketing research has occurred over the past two decades. Concurrently, there is increasing concern about the quality of these measures. Although the majority of marketing-related articles now discuss the reliability of the scales administered, few address the issue of scale validity. One aspect of scale validity, which should be of particular concern to marketing researchers, is the potential threat of contamination due to social-desirability response bias. However, a careful review of nearly 20 years of published research suggests that social-desirability bias has been consistently neglected in scale construction, evaluation, and implementation. The purpose of this article is to discuss the nature of such a bias, methods for identifying, testing for and/or preventing it, and how these methods can and should be implemented in consumer-related research. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
As the field of marketing matures there is increasing attention focused upon the quality of research being conducted by marketing researchers (Arndt, 1985; Brinberg & Hirschman, 1987; Hunt, 1990; Jacoby, 1978; Muncy & Fisk, 1987; Skipper & Hyman, 1987; 1990). In turn, the validity of the operational measures used to generate research data largely determines the validity of the findings reported in that research (Abrams, 1971; Churchill, 1979; Malholtra, 1988; Peter, 1979; Rentz, 1988). Among the most widely used measurement techniques in marketing is the multi-item summated scale. In order to be effective in the generation of interpretable research data, such scales must, at a minimum, be unidimensional, reliable, and internally valid. Most researchers would readily acknowledge their desire for, and commitment to, the implementation of valid measures; yet previous reviews of scale usage in the marketing literature suggest that little effort is typically expended to assess scale validity (Bruner, 1993; Peter, 1981; Peter & Churchill, 1986).
One potentially important threat to the validity of research employing multi-item scales is social desirability bias. The pervasive tendency of individuals to present themselves in the most favorable manner relative to prevailing social norms and mores has threatened to compromise research findings in the social sciences for more than 50 years. Provision of socially desirable responses in self-report data may lead to spurious correlations between variables as well as the suppression or moderation of...