@article{ref1,
title="Threat-inducing violent events exacerbate social desirability bias in survey responses",
journal="American journal of political science",
year="2023",
author="Singh, Shane P. and Tir, Jaroslav",
volume="67",
number="1",
pages="154-169",
abstract="A key challenge in survey research is social desirability bias: respondents feel pressured to report acceptable attitudes and behaviors. Building on established findings, we argue that threat-inducing violent events are a heretofore unaccounted for driver of social desirability bias. We probe this argument by investigating whether fatal terror attacks lead respondents to overreport past electoral participation, a well-known and measurable result of social desirability bias. Using a cross-national analysis and natural and survey experiments, we show that fatal terror attacks generate turnout overreporting. This highlights that threat-inducing violent events induce social desirability, that researchers need to account for the timing of survey fieldwork vis-à-vis such events, and that some of the previously reported post-violent conflict increases in political participation may be more apparent than real.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0092-5853",
doi="10.1111/ajps.12615",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12615"
}