Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Duesseldorf, Duesseldorf, Germany.
PLoS One. 2020 Jun 30;15(6):e0235403. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235403. eCollection 2020.
The crosswise model is an indirect questioning technique designed to control for socially desirable responding. Although the technique has delivered promising results in terms of improved validity in survey studies of sensitive issues, recent studies have indicated that the crosswise model may sometimes produce false positives. Hence, we investigated whether an insufficient understanding of the crosswise model instructions might be responsible for these false positives and whether ensuring a deeper understanding of the model and surveying more highly educated respondents reduces the problem of false positives. To this end, we experimentally manipulated the amount of information respondents received in the crosswise model instructions. We compared a crosswise model condition with only brief instructions and a crosswise model condition with detailed instructions and additional comprehension checks. Additionally, we compared the validity of crosswise model estimates between a higher- and a lower-educated subgroup of respondents. Our results indicate that false positives among highly educated respondents can be reduced when detailed instructions and comprehension checks are employed. Since false positives can also occur in direct questioning, they do not appear to be a specific flaw of the crosswise model, but rather a more general problem of self-reports on sensitive topics. False negatives were found to occur for all questioning techniques, but were less prevalent in the crosswise model than in the direct questioning condition. We highlight the importance of comprehension checks when applying indirect questioning and emphasize the necessity of developing instructions suitable for lower-educated respondents.
横剖模型是一种间接提问技术，旨在控制社会期望反应。尽管该技术在调查敏感问题的研究中提高了有效性方面取得了有希望的结果，但最近的研究表明，横剖模型有时可能会产生假阳性。因此，我们研究了对横剖模型指令的理解不足是否是这些假阳性的原因，以及确保对模型的更深入理解和调查受教育程度更高的受访者是否可以减少假阳性的问题。为此，我们在横剖模型指令中实验性地操纵了受访者收到的信息量。我们比较了仅提供简短说明的横剖模型条件和提供详细说明以及额外理解检查的横剖模型条件。此外，我们比较了高教育程度和低教育程度受访者群体的横剖模型估计值的有效性。我们的结果表明，当使用详细说明和理解检查时，可以减少高教育程度受访者中的假阳性。由于假阳性也可能出现在直接提问中，因此它们似乎不是横剖模型的特定缺陷，而是对敏感主题进行自我报告的更普遍问题。我们发现所有提问技术都存在假阴性，但横剖模型中的假阴性比直接提问条件中的假阴性要少。我们强调在应用间接提问时理解检查的重要性，并强调为受教育程度较低的受访者制定合适的指令的必要性。
