Social Desirability Bias in Social Surveys

Social surveys have always been the most important research tools for sociologists to collect data from large populations. The main problem in social surveys is “getting the correct answer” from the respondents, who may be caught in a situation when they hide their true and correct answer and instead they give an answer which is normatively considered a justified acceptable answer. This kind of answer in social survey research is considered the most important mistake by respondents and is known as social desirability bias. This article is an attempt to study the results of social desirability bias in social surveys and explain the sources and mechanisms of its production. A theoretical framework has been applied to analyze this bias. In the next step, the sensitive subjects or questions in survey are discussed, which are one of the main sources of social desirability bias. In the pursuance of this goal, one of the significant techniques for elimination or reduction of social desirability bias, when we deal with sensitive issues, has been mentioned, i.e. formulating the questions in an indirect form and addressed to “general others”. The theoretical expectation in approach to social desirability bias is that the respondents, on average, evaluate themselves as more positive than general others.
The empirical study of the said theoretical expectation was undertaken by 12 items related to the “Observation of Ethical Values” scale in a national survey with 4620 respondents as sample. All findings were extraordinarily consonant with the said theoretical expectation.