Report on Social Desirability, Midpoint and Extreme Responding in TALIS 2013

Abstract

This paper investigated the effects of response styles in cross-cultural contexts. The authors used data on social desirability, extreme and midpoint responding, and the scale scores of 17 constructs related to the teaching profession, which were collected from 76,887 teachers in 18 countries in the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Main findings are: (1) a 10-item social desirability scale demonstrated partial invariance of a positive and a negative impression management factor; (2) a general response style, representing a continuum ranging from response amplification to moderation, was extracted with social desirability and extreme responding as positive indicators and midpoint responding as a negative indicator; (3) social desirability and the general response style at the country level were negatively correlated with country affluence and educational achievement; (4) social desirability and the general response style were more strongly correlated with constructs of teacher efficacy and job satisfaction than other constructs at both the individual and country level; and (5) correction of response styles had negligible effects on cross-cultural differences in these constructs.