Psychology and its Contexts (Jun 2018)
Using semi-structured interview to asses social desirability and integrity
Abstract
This paper deals with two constructs – social desirability and integrity. Both constructs are related to honesty and trustfulness. Socially desirable responding interferes with accurate self-presentation and therefore can contaminate data from self-report questionnaires (Paulhus, 2002). Person with integrity is one who is not only honest but also has a strong sense for moral principles and is consistent (Dudzinski, 2004). Integrity is one of character strengths and virtues (Peterson & Seligmana, 2004a). Integrity and social desirability are operationalized by questionnaires. Using qualitative methods to assess social desirability and integrity can help to establish a conceptual framework of both vaguely defines constructs (Barnard, Schurink, & De Beer, 2008). The main aim of this study is to develop a semi-structured interview assessing integrity and social desirability. The interview is based on original Czech test battery focusing on integrity at the workplace – Integrita v Pracovním Prostředí (Příhodová et al., 2017). Specifically, overt integrity test Integrita v Pracovním a Běžném Životě alongside with questionnaire assessing social desirability was used. Semantic and correlation analysis of these two questionnaires helped to create a total of eight questions forming the semi-structured interview. The questions mainly cover lying, cheating and theft. Each question includes a short story from everyday life, and the respondent is asked to judge his or her behaviour in the presented situation and subsequently the behaviour of others as well. Respondents are asked to judge behaviour of others because it´s hypothesised that dishonest behaviour is more likely to occur in respondents who approve of dishonest behaviour of others, in those who have a positive attitude towards dishonest behaviour in general and in those who have behaved dishonestly in the past (Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, & Odle-Dusseau, 2012). Eight respondents (4 women, 4 men, 21 to 61 years old) from department n.2 of National Institute of Mental Health took part in the first research using a newly developed semi-structured interview. Besides the semi-structured interview Integrita v Pracovním a Běžném Životě as overt integrity test and a questionnaire assessing social desirability was used. Short demographic questionnaire was presented as well. Based on their integrity level according to integrity test results the respondents were divided into three groups to low integrity group (N = 3), medium integrity group (N = 3) and high integrity group (N = 2). Data obtained from the interviews were analysed while theoretical background how people with different levels of integrity differ was considered. The results showed that th semi-structured interview can distinguish respondents by their level of integrity. The distinction is possible through respondents’ description of their own behaviour, usage of moral disengagement and their preferences to make either internal or external attributions. Distinguishing different levels of tendencies to socially desirable responding was not possible due to homogeneity of the research group in observed trait.
