BEYOND THE MEAN BIAS: THE EFFECT OF WARNING AGAINST FAKING ON BIODATA ITEM VARIANCES
研究对429名护士助理申请者中的214人随机发出防伪警告，发现警告对透明项目和非透明项目的均值和方差有不同影响，且项目透明度由工作期望和社会期望共同决定。
We studied the effects of faking biodata test items by randomly warning 214 of 429 applicants for a nurse's assistant position against faking. While the warning mitigated the propensity to fake, the specific warning effects depended on item transparency. For transparent items, warning reduced the extremeness of item means and increased item variances. For nontransparent items, warning did not have an effect on item means and reduced item variances. These faking effects were best predicted when transparency was operationalized in terms of item‐specific job desirability in addition to the item‐general social desirability. We also demonstrated a psychometric principle: The effect of warning on means at the item level is preserved in scales constructed from those items, but the effect on variances at the item level is masked at the scale level. These results raise new questions regarding the attenuating effects of faking on validity, and regarding the benefit of warning applicants against faking.