Soziale Erwünschtheit bei der Erfassung von Einstellungen gegenüber Ausländern. Theoretische Prognosen und deren empirische Überprüfung

This article examines the mutual dependency of the determinants for socially desirable response behavior and the until now completely neglected relevance of the respondents attitudes towards surveys in this respect. Results from a field experiment show that this response bias is only to be expected in public response situations, for respondents with a sufficiently strong impression management motive and when the perceived desirability of the response options differ. If one of these conditions is not fulfilled, or if the respondents are endowed with a positive and at the same time sufficiently strong attitude toward surveys, we find no indication for response bias. Inconsistent results about the explanatory power of these factors reported in the literature can be traced back to their non-additive interplay. The study also shows, for the first time, that socio-structurally defined subgroups of respondents perceive either a positive or a negative attitude toward foreigners to be more desirable. The corresponding response bias in opposing directions is found to be cancelled out on the aggregate data level. Furthermore, the often observed correlation between the age and education of the respondents and their attitudes toward foreigners is partly the result of subgroup-specific perceptions about the desirability of different attitudes.