The problem is that aggregate SOI must be very similar for men as a group and for women as a group, in particular answers to questions 1-3 must be extremely close (as they measure behaviour, not orientation, and there’s one man and one woman in every sex pairing of the past year, every sex pairing of the next five years, and every one night stand, other than some tiny effects). The data makes it extremely obvious that they’re not, so there’s spectacular amount of systemic lying going on.
Doing anything with answers to questions you know people systemically lie about, you need to ask yourself what are you really measuring.
Yeah, there could be some lying going on (though there doesn’t have to be a “spectacular” amount; see Psychohistorian’s response).
However, just because people tend to lie about a certain behavior, it doesn’t make it useless to try to measure it. Rather than just giving up, psychologists often employ measures that will detect deceptiveness or social desirability bias such as the Marlowe-Crowne scale.
Doing anything with answers to questions you know people systemically lie about, you need to ask yourself what are you really measuring.
True. But at least in this case, people who underreport on this scale probably have less of what it’s actually trying to measure than people with the same behavior who report accurately. Since the SOI is about orientation, then how forthcoming and proud you are of the behavior it measures could be seen as part of that orientation.
For one amount of lying changes drastically depending on tiny details of how the test is administered. If you know about widespread lying is, and want to include it, you need to standardize testing conditions.
Doing anything with answers to questions you know people systemically lie about, you need to ask yourself what are you really measuring...
For one amount of lying changes drastically depending on tiny details of how the test is administered. If you know about widespread lying is, and want to include it, you need to standardize testing conditions.
Those are good points. They definitely could produce better measures.
The problem is that aggregate SOI must be very similar for men as a group and for women as a group, in particular answers to questions 1-3 must be extremely close (as they measure behaviour, not orientation, and there’s one man and one woman in every sex pairing of the past year, every sex pairing of the next five years, and every one night stand, other than some tiny effects). The data makes it extremely obvious that they’re not, so there’s spectacular amount of systemic lying going on.
Doing anything with answers to questions you know people systemically lie about, you need to ask yourself what are you really measuring.
Yeah, there could be some lying going on (though there doesn’t have to be a “spectacular” amount; see Psychohistorian’s response).
However, just because people tend to lie about a certain behavior, it doesn’t make it useless to try to measure it. Rather than just giving up, psychologists often employ measures that will detect deceptiveness or social desirability bias such as the Marlowe-Crowne scale.
True. But at least in this case, people who underreport on this scale probably have less of what it’s actually trying to measure than people with the same behavior who report accurately. Since the SOI is about orientation, then how forthcoming and proud you are of the behavior it measures could be seen as part of that orientation.
For one amount of lying changes drastically depending on tiny details of how the test is administered. If you know about widespread lying is, and want to include it, you need to standardize testing conditions.
Those are good points. They definitely could produce better measures.