The balanced inventory of desirable responding (BIDR) - A reliability generalization study

The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) is one of the most widely used social desirability scales. The authors conducted a reliability generalization study to examine the typical reliability coefficients of BIDR scores and explored factors that explained the variability of reliability estimates across studies. The results indicated that the overall BIDR scale produced scores that were adequately reliable. The mean score reliability estimates for the two subscales, Self-Deception Enhancement and Impression Management, were not satisfactory. In addition, although a number of study characteristics were statistically significantly related to reliability estimates, they accounted for only a small portion of the overall variability in reliability estimates. The results of these findings and their implications are also discussed.