Psychometric study of Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding

Resum

Social desirability represents the psychological tendency to self-attributed socially desirable qualities, rejecting those undesirable. Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR-6) is one of the most used instruments to measure it. The present study investigated the factorial, convergent and external validity, internal consistency of the scales and correlations with demographic variables. The instrument was applied to an intentional and non-probabilistic sample of 406 adult participants, 188 men and 218 women residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For the current discussion about the nature and dimensionality of the construct, confirmatory factor analysis of different models were performed and the setting values and the factor structures obtained were compared, finding greater empirical support for a one-dimensional model of social desirability with 18 indicators. The results of this research bring support to construct validity and reliability of adaptation BIRD-6 in its reduced version. Also, it has been obtained favorable evidence of external validity, comparing the social desirability between offenders and non-offenders. Regarding the relationship among social desirability and socio-demographic variables studied the results are consistent with previous literature. Women have higher social desirability values. The older the participants are, the higher tendency they show in socially acceptable self-image. On the other hand, higher educational levels tend to report lower scores in social desirability.