De invloed van etniciteit op de sociaal wenselijkheidscore van de Hoe Ik Denk vragenlijst

Abstract

Social desirability is an issue for social science research. It can cause numerous problems for interpretation and validity. Not much is known about the influence ethnicity has on social desirability. Although there may be some big differences between the ethnics, for example the difference between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. This research wants to study the influence of ethnicity on the cognitive distortions, measured by the How I Think Questionnaire (HIT), and the social desirability scale of the HIT (AR-scale). This study will also focus on the validity of the AR scale of the HIT. This study is subdivided into two separate studies with their own dataset. One of them was formed by separate datasets and one was formed by the researcher which therefore was very small. In study 1 a covariance analysis examined whether there were main effects for or interactions between ethnicity, gender, age or delinquency on the cognitive distortions. The AR scale was used as a control variable, because there were significant differences between ethnicities. It was shown that there were main effects of delinquency and ethnicity on some of the cognitive distortions, but more noticeable was the fact that some of the main effects for ethnicity were only shown when the AR scale controlled in the analysis. In study 2 correlations were measured between the verbal and written take of the AR scale and egocentrism scale of the HIT to measure the validity. It appeared that the AR scale wasn’t valid, but the egocentrism scale was. It can be concluded that there are differences for ethnicity on social desirability and cognitive distortions and that the differences on the AR scale can cause insufficient views on scores on the HIT. Also it isn’t sure whether the AR scale is valid, so before excluding scores of the HIT based on cut-off point of the AR score, it must be sure that the AR scale is valid at all. Limitations of this study were the small amount of respondents for study 2, which is why the conclusion about the validity can’t be generalised. Positives about this study were the new findings concerning the influence of the ethnicity on both social desirability and cognitive distortions and the implication of an insufficient validity of the AR scale, which must be studied in future research.