Social Desirability in Multivariate Context for Inmate Survey Research

ABSTRACT

In efforts to reduce recidivism, methods to develop predictors of post-release success for the incarcerated are important for assessing whom to target and deliver effective education and other support. Psychological surveys of work-release transitional center participants in Georgia obtained their reports about attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) to predict positive financial management intentions. Consistent with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), multivariate analysis revealed that those predictors were positively related to intentions, as was long-term incarceration status. The study also examined the extent to which participants may have provided misleading reports via socially desirable response patterns (SD). SD scores were measured with the Crowne–Marlowe short-form scale. SD had different relationships to each of the TPB predictors, which included a puzzling negative relationship to PBC. Alternative theories about SD reporting were used to interpret these relationship patterns as well as to consider how the level of SD scores affected associations between the TPB predictors and intentions. A main conclusion is that transitional center participants’ SD tendencies did not confound inferences that PBC promoted positive financial management intentions nor other findings regarding attitudes, norms, and incarceration status. Implications for future psychological survey research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Reentry/reintegration
• theory
• social desirability

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge help of the men and women serving time throughout the Georgia Transitional Centers who participated in the surveys. Additionally, we are very thankful for the support of the Transitional Center Coordinators who allowed me in to collect the data and Statewide County Prison Coordinator Tommy Fountain, who formerly served as the Transitional Center Coordinator and who made this project, and others, possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.