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Using the Multidimensional Nominal Response Model to Model Faking in Questionnaire Data: The Importance of Item Desirability Characteristics
- Timo Seitz
- Eunike Wetzel
- Benjamin E. Hilbig
- Thorsten Meiser
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Description: Faking in self-report personality questionnaires describes a deliberate response distortion aimed at presenting oneself in an overly favorable manner. Unless the influence of faking on item responses is taken into account, faking can harm multiple psychometric properties of a test. In the present research, we account for faking using an extension of the multidimensional nominal response model (MNRM), which is an item response theory (IRT) model that offers a flexible framework for modeling different kinds of response biases. Particularly, we investigated under which circumstances the MNRM can adequately adjust substantive trait estimates and latent correlations for the influence of faking and examined the role of variation in the way item content is related to social desirability (i.e., item desirability characteristics) in facilitating the modeling of faking and counteracting its detrimental effects. Using a simulation, we found that the inclusion of a faking dimension in the model can overall improve the recovery of substantive trait person parameters and latent correlations between substantive traits, especially when the impact of faking in the data is high. Item desirability characteristics moderated the effect of modeling faking and were themselves associated with different levels of parameter recovery. In an empirical demonstration with N = 1070 test-takers, we also showed that the faking modeling approach in combination with different item desirability characteristics can prove successful in empirical questionnaire data. This OSF project contains the script of the simulation, the instructions, items, data, and analysis code of the main study of the empirical demonstration, as well as the instructions, data, and analysis code of the pilot study of the empirical demonstration. Also, a syntax file in which we guide applied researchers and practitioners through the steps of specifying and estimating the MNRM is available.