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THE INFLUENCE OF A DESIRABILITY HALO EFFECT ON RATINGS OF INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT
Author(s) -
MITCHELL JAMES V.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
journal of educational measurement
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.917
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1745-3984
pISSN - 0022-0655
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-3984.1973.tb00797.x
Subject(s) - social desirability , psychology , scale (ratio) , halo , discriminative model , test (biology) , social psychology , perception , clinical psychology , applied psychology , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , galaxy , computer science , biology
A rationale is provided for hypothesizing that a counterpart of the social desirability variable influences environmental ratings based on student perceptions, and a test is made of the hypothesis. The High School Characteristics Index was administered to 2819 high school seniors from 11 high schools. Social desirability scale values for the 300 items and 30 scale scores of the HSCI were obtained from 85 students in Education, and these values were correlated with the endorsement percentages and average scale scores for the students in each of the 11 high schools. Results indicated an appreciable “desirability halo” effect for some student bodies, with wide differences among student bodies with respect to the strength and direction of that effect. The results are interpreted as a serious challenge to the validity and discriminative capability of environmental assessment techniques based on student perceptions.