Department of Psychology, University of Mannheim, L13, 15-17 - room 515, 68161, Mannheim, Germany.
University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany.
Behav Res Methods. 2024 Dec;56(8):8869-8896. doi: 10.3758/s13428-024-02509-x. Epub 2024 Sep 20.
Faking in self-report personality questionnaires describes a deliberate response distortion aimed at presenting oneself in an overly favorable manner. Unless the influence of faking on item responses is taken into account, faking can harm multiple psychometric properties of a test. In the present article, we account for faking using an extension of the multidimensional nominal response model (MNRM), which is an item response theory (IRT) model that offers a flexible framework for modeling different kinds of response biases. Particularly, we investigated under which circumstances the MNRM can adequately adjust substantive trait scores and latent correlations for the influence of faking and examined the role of variation in the way item content is related to social desirability (i.e., item desirability characteristics) in facilitating the modeling of faking and counteracting its detrimental effects. Using a simulation, we found that the inclusion of a faking dimension in the model can overall improve the recovery of substantive trait person parameters and latent correlations between substantive traits, especially when the impact of faking in the data is high. Item desirability characteristics moderated the effect of modeling faking and were themselves associated with different levels of parameter recovery. In an empirical demonstration with N = 1070 test-takers, we also showed that the faking modeling approach in combination with different item desirability characteristics can prove successful in empirical questionnaire data. We end the article with a discussion of implications for psychological assessment.
自陈式人格问卷中的伪造描述的是一种蓄意的反应扭曲，旨在以过于有利的方式呈现自己。除非考虑到伪造对项目反应的影响，否则伪造会损害测试的多个心理计量特性。在本文中，我们使用多维名义反应模型（MNRM）的扩展来解释伪造，该模型是一种项目反应理论（IRT）模型，为建模不同类型的反应偏差提供了灵活的框架。特别是，我们研究了在何种情况下，MNRM 可以充分调整伪造对实质性特质分数和潜在相关性的影响，并考察了项目内容与社会期望性（即项目期望特征）之间的关系变化在促进伪造建模和抵消其不利影响方面的作用。通过模拟，我们发现，在模型中包含伪造维度通常可以改善实质性特质个体参数和实质性特质之间潜在相关性的恢复，尤其是当数据中伪造的影响较高时。项目期望特征调节了伪造建模的效果，并且它们本身与不同水平的参数恢复有关。在对 N = 1070 名应试者的实证示范中，我们还表明，伪造建模方法与不同的项目期望特征相结合，可以在实证问卷数据中取得成功。最后，我们讨论了对心理评估的影响。
