A Short Social Desirability Scale

Abstract

Ss' desire to look good, a form of social desirability responding, can powerfully affect their responses. When time is limited, it would be helpful to have a brief measure of this artifact. Such a measure was formed from Marlowe-Crowne and other social desirability items by ranking Likert item-total correlations and then pairing each positively keyed item with a negatively keyed item of corresponding rank. Inventories of two to 38 items resulted, together with a possibility of producing more than one scale of equivalent internal consistency.