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Does Conjoint Analysis Mitigate Social Desirability Bias?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2021

Yusaku Horiuchi Open the ORCID record for Yusaku Horiuchi [Opens in a new window] ,
Zachary Markovich Open the ORCID record for Zachary Markovich [Opens in a new window]  and
Teppei Yamamoto Open the ORCID record for Teppei Yamamoto [Opens in a new window]
Yusaku Horiuchi
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA. E-mail: yusaku.horiuchi@dartmouth.edu
Zachary Markovich*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Email: zmarko@mit.edu
Teppei Yamamoto
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Email: teppei@mit.edu
*
Corresponding author Zachary Markovich
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Abstract

How can we elicit honest responses in surveys? Conjoint analysis has become a popular tool to address social desirability bias (SDB), or systematic survey misreporting on sensitive topics. However, there has been no direct evidence showing its suitability for this purpose. We propose a novel experimental design to identify conjoint analysis’s ability to mitigate SDB. Specifically, we compare a standard, fully randomized conjoint design against a partially randomized design where only the sensitive attribute is varied between the two profiles in each task. We also include a control condition to remove confounding due to the increased attention to the varying attribute under the partially randomized design. We implement this empirical strategy in two studies on attitudes about environmental conservation and preferences about congressional candidates. In both studies, our estimates indicate that the fully randomized conjoint design could reduce SDB for the average marginal component effect (AMCE) of the sensitive attribute by about two-thirds of the AMCE itself. Although encouraging, we caution that our results are exploratory and exhibit some sensitivity to alternative model specifications, suggesting the need for additional confirmatory evidence based on the proposed design.

Keywords

response biassocial desirabilityfactorial surveyssurvey methodologyconjoint analysis
Type
Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 535 - 549
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology

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Footnotes

Edited by Jeff Gill

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