Desirable Responding on Attitudes and Opinions (RD-16)

Abstract

The Children’s Social Desirability Scale (CSD) is a psychological scale consisting of 48 true/false statements designed to measure Social Desirability Responding (SDR) in children. This instrument was developed by Crandall, Crandall, and Katkovsky (1965) and is modeled directly after the adult Marlowe-Crowne scale. While initially meant to assess the need for approval, the core construct was later refined to measure the fear of disapproval (Crandall, 1966). The CSD incorporates child-specific content and language, yielding a total score ranging from 0 to 48, where higher scores indicate a stronger tendency toward socially desirable responding.

Keywords

Children’s Social Desirability Scale (CSD), Social Desirability Responding (SDR), Marlowe-Crowne scale, Fear of Disapproval, Psychometrics, Child Psychology, Response Bias.

Authors

V. Crandall, V. J. Crandall, W. A. Katkovsky

Purpose

The primary purpose of the CSD is to quantitatively assess the tendency of children and adolescents to engage in socially desirable responding (SDR). This tendency reflects a systematic response bias where participants select answers that align with perceived social norms or expectations, rather than reporting their genuine behavior, attitudes, or opinions.

By measuring this bias, researchers and clinicians can account for the influence of self-report distortion when interpreting results from other personality or attitude measures administered to children. The scale aims to capture the motivation underlying this bias, which is characterized by the fear of disapproval from parents, teachers, or peers.

Construct

The CSD measures the psychological construct of Social Desirability Responding (SDR) in children. SDR manifests as the tendency to endorse favorable, yet often untrue, statements about oneself, or to deny unfavorable, yet common, behaviors. This tendency is understood to be motivated by a desire to gain social acceptance or, more specifically, to avoid negative social judgment.

The scale content is structured to identify individuals who claim unusually high levels of virtuous behavior or deny minor transgressions common in childhood. Items are adapted from the Marlowe-Crowne scale but include content relevant to the pediatric population (e.g., relating to school attendance, obedience to parents, or sharing possessions), ensuring the construct is measured within the appropriate developmental context.

Validity

The validity of the CSD has been explored through convergent studies and behavioral observation, demonstrating its link to both other self-report measures and external behaviors.

Convergent Validity:

• The CSD exhibited a strong correlation (r = .78) with the adult Marlowe-Crowne scale, supporting its foundation as a child-appropriate measure of the same social desirability construct.
• A moderate correlation (r = .51) was found between the CSD scores and scores on the Good Impression scales.
• High CSD scorers were found to be more religious (Crandall & Gozali, 1969), but simultaneously reported lower self-esteem (Crandall, 1966), suggesting that the attempt to present a positive image may mask underlying insecurities.

Observational and Behavioral Validity:

• In real-world observational studies (Crandall, 1966; Staub & Sherk, 1970), children scoring highly on the CSD displayed behaviors consistent with social conformity and anxiety about judgment. These behaviors included being less aggressive, participating less in group activities, avoiding achievement-oriented tasks, and even eating less candy when in the presence of others.
• It is noted that some evidence regarding the construct’s operationalization has been inconsistent, requiring further review (Strickland, 1977).

Discriminant Validity:

• No specific relevant information regarding the discriminant validity of the CSD has been formally reported in the core literature provided.

Reliability

The CSD demonstrates high short-term reliability, though its stability decreases markedly over long developmental intervals, which has been interpreted as evidence of developmental change in SDR tendencies.

Internal Consistency:

• The scale shows excellent Internal Consistency. Crandall et al. (1965) reported corrected split-half reliabilities ranging from .82 to .95, indicating that the items reliably measure a coherent underlying construct.

Test-Retest Stability:

• Short-term stability is high: Test-Retest correlations after a one-month interval were r = .85 (Crandall et al., 1965) and r = .90 (Allaman et al., 1972).
• Long-term stability is low: Over a three-year span, the Test-Retest correlations dropped significantly to r = .43 for males and r = .19 for females. Crandall et al. (1965) interpreted this low stability as reflective of developmental instability in social desirability responding during childhood.

Factor Analysis

Specific factor analytic studies detailing the latent structure of the CSD were not provided in the foundational literature. However, because the scale is modeled after the adult Marlowe-Crowne scale, which is typically conceptualized as measuring a single factor of social desirability, the CSD is generally utilized as a unidimensional measure of the SDR construct.

Instrument

Test Type: Psychological scale, Self-Report Questionnaire (assessing response bias).

Format: 48 statements in a True-False format. An alternative version for younger children (Grades 3–5) uses a question format, typically presented via recording for enhanced standardization.

Language Available: English (Original development).

Population Group: Children and Adolescents.

Age Group: Grade school and high school students (Grades 3 through 12).

Population Details: The initial validation sample included 956 grade school and high school students.

Test Methodology: The scale yields a total score ranging from 0 to 48. 26 items are keyed True. High scores indicate high SDR (fear of disapproval). Developmental data revealed a monotonic decrease in mean scores with age, dropping from 29.3 (SD 10.4) in Grade 3 to 12.7 (SD 7.6) in Grade 12.

Keywords

Social Desirability Responding, SDR, Children, Psychological scale, Measurement Bias, Development Stability, Self-esteem, Response Style.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Information not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Information not provided in source.

Correspondence Address: Information not provided in source.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 1965.

Permissions & Fee: The scale was originally published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology. Researchers seeking to use the scale must obtain permission from the journal publisher and/or the authors’ estates. The actual items were published for reference in Strickland (1977).

Reference’s

1. Allaman, J. D., Clack, G. S., & Levenson, H. (1972). The relation of social desirability to maternal behavior and early childhood experiences. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 38(1), 16–21.
2. Brannigan, G. G. (1974). A correlation study of the written and recorded forms of the Children’s Social Desirability Scale. Journal of Psychology, 88(2), 297-298.
3. Crandall, V. C. (1966). Social desirability responses of children, high school students, and adult males. Child Development, 37(3), 545-552.
4. Crandall, V. C., Crandall, V. J., & Katkovsky, W. A. (1965). A children’s social desirability scale. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 29(1), 27–36.
5. Crandall, V. C., & Gozali, J. (1969). The social desirability responses of children: Prediction of their academic achievement and the correlates of their parents’ behavior. Child Development, 40(1), 293-311.
6. Staub, E., & Sherk, L. (1970). The relationship between children’s social desirability scores and the tendency to eat less candy in the presence of others. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 9(1), 1-8.
7. Strickland, B. R. (1977). Social desirability and personality assessment. In B. A. Maher (Ed.), Progress in Experimental Personality Research (Vol. 8, pp. 1-44). Academic Press.

Items of the Responding Desirably on Attitudes and Opinions (RD-16)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

CSD

This questionnaire lists a number of experiences that most children have at one time or another. Read each of these carefully. After you have read one, decide whether it does or does not fit you. If it does, put a T (for true) in front of the statement; if it doesn’t, put an F (for false) in front of the statement. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are keyed False (negative direction).

1. I always enjoy myself at a party.
2. * I tell a little lie sometimes.
3. I never get angry if I have to stop in the middle of something I’m doing to eat dinner, or go to school.
4. * Sometimes i don’t like to share my things with my friends.
5. I am always respectful of older people.
6. i WOUld never hit a boy or girl who was smaller than me.
7. * Sometimes i do not feel like doing what my teachers want me to do.
8. I never act “fresh” or “talk back” to my mother or father.
9. When I make a mistake, i always admit I am wrong.
10. * I feel my parents do not always show good judgment.
11. I have never felt like saying unkind things to a person.
12. I always finish all of my homework on time.
13. * Sometimes i have felt like throwing or breaking things.
14. i never let someone else get blamed for what I did wrong.
15. * Sometimes I say something just to impress my friends.
16. I am always careful about keeping my clothing neat, and my room picked up.
17. I never shout when I feel angry.
18. * Sometimes i feel like staying home from school even if I am not sick.
19. * Sometimes i wish that my parents didn’t check up on me so closely.
20. I always help people who need help.
21. * Sometimes I argue with my mother to do something she doesn’t want me to do.
22. i never say anything that would make a person feel bad.
23. My teachers always know more about everything than i do.
24. I am always polite, even to people who are not very nice.
25. * Sometimes I do things I’ve been told not to do.
26. I never get angry.
27. * I sometimes want to own things just because my friends have them.
28. I always listen to my parents.
29. I never forget to say “please” and “thank you.”
30. * Sometimes I wish I could iust “mess around” instead of having to go to school.
31. I always wash my hands before every meal.
32. * Sometimes I dislike helping my parents even though I know they need my help around the house.
33. I never find it hard to make friends.
34. I have never been tempted to break a rule or a law.
35. * Sometimes I try to get even when someone does something to me I don’t like.
36. * I sometimes feel angry when I don’t get my way.
37. I always help an iniured animal.
38. * Sometimes I want to do things my parents think I am too young to do.
39. * I sometimes feel like making fun of other people.
40. I have never borrowed anything without asking permission first.
41. * Sometimes I get annoyed when someone disturbs something I’ve been working on.
42. I am always glad to cooperate with others.
43. I never get annoyed when my best friend wants to do something I don’t want to do.
44. * Sometimes I wish that the other kids would pay more attention to what I say.
45. I always do the right things.
46. * Sometimes I don’t like to obey my parents.
47. * Sometimes I don’t like it when another person asks me to do things for him.
48. * Sometimes I get mad when people don’t do what I want.