An experimental assessment of sex differences in interviewer-induced social desirability bias

Social desirability bias (SDB) occurs when respondents systematically distortsurvey responses through self-deception and impression management. While there isa large literature on interviewer-induced SDB, less is known about how and why thisvaries between different respondents across demographic groups. We present newevidence on between-group heterogeneity in SDB, with a specific focus on respond-ent sex, from a randomised mode experiment where respondents were randomlyassigned to either computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) or ComputerAssisted Web Interview (CAWI). Allied with the availability of rich covariates onboth respondents and nonrespondents, this design enables us to estimate the causaleffect of interview mode on SDB, separately for men and women, across a large setof both positively and negatively valenced attitudes and behaviours. Our results re-veal large mode effects on SDB: CATI administration inflates reporting of positivelyvalenced items while suppressing reports of negatively valenced items compared toCAWI. These differences were largest and most consistent for positively valenceditems. Women showed significantly greater interviewer-induced SDB than men onthese outcomes. Our findings point to the superiority of online self-completion formeasuring normatively valenced attitudes and behaviours. They also suggest thatinterviewer-administration can systematically distort between-group comparisonson normatively sensitive questions.