Acquiescence bias

Acquiescence bias is a category of response bias in which respondents to a survey have a tendency to agree with all the questions or to indicate a positive connotation.^[1]^[2] Acquiescence is sometimes referred to as "yea-saying" and is the tendency of a respondent to agree with a statement when in doubt. This particularly is in the case of surveys or questionnaires that employ truisms, such as: "It is better to give than to receive" or "Never a lender nor a borrower be".

Douglas N. Jackson did a demonstration of acquiescence responding on the California F-scale (a measure of authoritarianism), which contains such truisms. He created a reverse-keyed version of the California F-scale where all the items were the opposite in meaning (see the two previous examples for a pair of such contradictory statements). He administered both the original and reverse-keyed versions of the California F-scale to the same group of respondents. One would expect that the correlation between these two scales to be negative, but there was a high, positive correlation. Jackson interpreted this as evidence of acquiescence responding. Respondents were merely being agreeable to the statements, regardless of the content.

Jackson and Messick, using factor analysis, also demonstrated that the two main factors explaining the majority of response variation on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were for social desirability and acquiescence responding^[3] (this would also hold true for the revised MMPI-2).

One approach to dealing with acquiescence responding on surveys and questionnaires is to employ a balance of positively and negatively keyed items in terms of the intended content. For example, in trying to assess depression it would be a good idea to also include items assessing happiness and contentedness, etc. (reversed-keyed items), in addition to the usual depressive content.^[4]

References

^ Watson, Dorothy (1992). "Correcting for Acquiescent Response Bias in the Absence of a Balanced Scale: An Application to Class Consciousness". Sociological Methods & Research. 21 (1): 52–88. doi:10.1177/0049124192021001003.
^ Moss, Simon. (2008). Acquiescence bias
^ Messick, Samuel; Jackson, Douglas N. (1961). "Acquiescence and the factorial interpretation of the MMPI". Psychological Bulletin. 58 (4): 299–304. doi:10.1037/h0043979.
^ Erikson, Robert S.; Tedin, Kent L. (2015). American Public Opinion: Its Origins, Content and Impact. Routledge. ISBN 9781317350385.

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[Watson-1] Watson, Dorothy (1992). "Correcting for Acquiescent Response Bias in the Absence of a Balanced Scale: An Application to Class Consciousness". Sociological Methods & Research. 21 (1): 52–88. doi:10.1177/0049124192021001003.

[Psychlopedia-2] Moss, Simon. (2008). Acquiescence bias

[Messick-3] Messick, Samuel; Jackson, Douglas N. (1961). "Acquiescence and the factorial interpretation of the MMPI". Psychological Bulletin. 58 (4): 299–304. doi:10.1037/h0043979.

[EriksonTedin-4] Erikson, Robert S.; Tedin, Kent L. (2015). American Public Opinion: Its Origins, Content and Impact. Routledge. ISBN 9781317350385.

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v t e Biases
Cognitive biases	Acquiescence Ambiguity Affinity Anchoring Attentional Attribution Actor–observer Correspondence Authority Automation Availability Mean world Belief Blind spot Choice-supportive Commitment Confirmation Selective perception Compassion fade Congruence Cultural Declinism Distinction Dunning–Kruger Egocentric Curse of knowledge Emotional Extrinsic incentives Fading affect Framing Frequency Frog pond effect Halo effect Hindsight Horn effect Hostile attribution Impact Implicit In-group Intentionality Illusion of transparency Mean world syndrome Mere-exposure effect Narrative Negativity Normalcy Omission Optimism Out-group homogeneity Outcome Overton window Precision Present Pro-innovation Proximity Response Restraint Self-serving Social comparison Social influence bias Spotlight Status quo Substitution Time-saving Trait ascription Turkey illusion von Restorff effect Zero-risk In animals
Statistical biases	Estimator Forecast Healthy user Information Psychological Lead time Length time Non-response Observer Omitted-variable Participation Recall Sampling Selection Self-selection Social desirability Spectrum Survivorship Systematic error Systemic Verification Wet
Other biases	Academic Basking in reflected glory Déformation professionnelle Funding FUTON Inductive Infrastructure Inherent In education Liking gap Media False balance Vietnam War Norway South Asia Sweden United States Arab–Israeli conflict Ukraine Net Political bias Publication Reporting White hat
Bias reduction	Cognitive bias mitigation Debiasing Heuristics in judgment and decision-making
Lists: General Memory

See also

References

External links