THE RELIABILITY AND FACTOR STRUCTURE OF A SOCIAL DESIRABILITY SCALE IN ENGLISH AND IN SPANISH

Socially desirable responding has typically been thought to consist of two broad types: impression management and self-deceptive enhancement. Previous studies have tended to examine only social desirability scales with items in English. In the present study, an 11-item social desirability scale was developed in both English and Spanish. Out of a total of 2,519 applicants for an unskilled manual-laborer position with a large service employer in the western United States, 1,913 respondents completed the form in English and 606 did so in Spanish. The results of two factor analyses revealed that the factor structures are different for the two versions of the social desirability scale. Cronbach's alphas obtained for English and Spanish forms were .80 and .64, respectively. The concept of simpatia is provided as a possible explanation for the differing factor structures for the English and Spanish versions of the scale.