The relationship between social desirability and internal consistency of personality scales.

3 hypotheses concerning the relationships between psychometric characteristics of 61 personality scales were tested. A measure of internal consistency (Kuder-Richardson Formula 21) was found to be positively correlated (.62) with the degree of imbalance in the social desirability keying of the scales. Internal consistency was also negatively correlated (-.46) with the proportion of neutral items in the scales. The mean probability of a keyed response to the items in a scale was positively correlated (.83) with the proportion of items keyed for socially desirable responses. These results are consistent with predictions based upon social desirability considerations. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)