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A Social Desirability Item Response Theory Model: Retrieve–Deceive–Transfer

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Abstract

In this study, a new item response theory model is developed to account for situations in which respondents overreport or underreport their actual opinions on a positive or negative issue. Such behavior is supposed to be a result of deception and transfer mechanisms. In the proposed model, this behavior is simulated by incorporating a deception term into a multidimensional rating scale model, followed by multiplication by a transfer term, with the two operations performed by an indicator function and a transition matrix separately. The proposed model is presented in a Bayesian framework approximated by Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms. Through a series of simulations, the parameters of the proposed model are recovered accurately. The methodology is also implemented within an online experimental study to demonstrate the methodology’s application.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 104-2410-H-002-059-MY2, MOST 106-2410-H-002-081-SSS, and MOST 108-2410-H-002-100-) for Grace Yao. We would like to thank Dr. Hsiu-Ting Yu, Dr. Yu-Wei Chang, and all the reviewers for giving valuable comments on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Cheng-Han Leng & Grace Yao

  2. University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hung-Yu Huang

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  1. Cheng-Han Leng
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  2. Hung-Yu Huang
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  3. Grace Yao
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Correspondence to Grace Yao.

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This research was funded by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 104-2410- H-002-059-MY2 and MOST 106-2410-H-002-081-SSS) for the third author.

We would like to thank Dr. Hsiu-Ting Yu and Dr. Yu-Wei Chang for giving valuable comments on this paper.

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Leng, CH., Huang, HY. & Yao, G. A Social Desirability Item Response Theory Model: Retrieve–Deceive–Transfer. Psychometrika 85, 56–74 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-019-09689-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11336-019-09689-y

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