Careless responding detection revisited: Accuracy of direct and indirect measures

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

To screen for careless responding, researchers have a choice between several direct measures (i.e., bogus items, requiring the respondent to choose a specific answer) and indirect measures (i.e., unobtrusive post hoc indices). Given the dearth of research in the area, we examined how well direct and indirect indices perform relative to each other. In five experimental studies, we investigated whether the detection rates of the measures are affected by contextual factors: severity of the careless response pattern, type of item keying, and type of item presentation. We fully controlled the information environment by experimentally inducing careless response sets under a variety of contextual conditions. In Studies 1 and 2, participants rated the personality of an actor that presented himself in a 5-min-long videotaped speech. In Studies 3, 4, and 5, participants had to rate their own personality across two measurements. With the exception of maximum longstring, intra-individual response variability, and individual contribution to model misfit, all examined indirect indices performed better than chance in most of the examined conditions. Moreover, indirect indices had detection rates as good as and, in many cases, better than the detection rates of direct measures. We therefore encourage researchers to use indirect indices, especially within-person consistency indices, instead of direct measures.

Original languageEnglish
JournalBehavior Research Methods
Volume56
Issue number8
Pages (from-to)8422-8449
Number of pages28
ISSN1554-351X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12.2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Discovering cooperation
  2. Omega
  3. Why the future is democratic
  4. Standardisierung, Typisierung, Normung
  5. Through the eye of a butterfly
  6. Vorwort
  7. Seth Price. Decimating Digital Data
  8. Funktions-, anreiz- und aufwandsorientierte Vergütung des Aufsichtsrats und Prüfungsausschusses.
  9. LogIcons
  10. PharmCycle
  11. Cultural Consumption Analysis: Beyond Structure and Agency
  12. Firm panel data from German official statistics
  13. Gesprächsformen
  14. Forschung zur ersten Phase der Lehrerbildung
  15. Key questions and uncertainties associated with the assessment of the cropland greenhouse gas balance
  16. Alex Adriaansens
  17. Die Rückkehr der Plantafel
  18. Philoktet, Odysseus, Neoptolemos, Ajax
  19. Plant diversity surpasses plant functional groups and plant productivity as driver of soil biota in the long term
  20. Effect of rotational speed and double-sided welding in friction stir–welded dissimilar joints of aluminum alloy and steel
  21. The artistic spirit of cities
  22. Bioassay-directed fractionation for analyzing estrogens in surface waters of the German Baltic Sea
  23. The role of past interactions in great apes' communication about absent entities
  24. The (dis)similarity of interindustry wage differentials in Germany and the United-States
  25. Remembering and Communicating Climate Change Narratives – The Influence of World Views on Selective Recollection
  26. Die gantze Heilige Schrift ,,, zu unserer Seelen-Wolfahrt
  27. Zwingende Umwelt- und Sozialkompetenz im Vorstand und Aufsichtsrat?
  28. Woody plant species diversity and composition in and around Debre Libanos church forests of North Shoa Zone of Oromiya, Ethiopia