IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mos/moswps/2022-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Improving the reliability and validity of data on Big Five personality traits in developing countries

Author

Listed:
  • An Huang

    (Economics, Monash University)

  • Paulo Santos

    (Economics, Monash University)

Abstract

Recent research argues that personality data collected in developing countries may fail to measure the intended personality traits. We quantify the importance of three potential drivers of such failure (acquiescence response, social desirability response, and enumerator effects) in terms of their influence on psychometric properties and the predictive power of data on the Big Five personality traits. Our results suggest that both the reliability and validity of survey data on the Big Five can be improved by correcting for acquiescence bias, and that the performance of this correction can be greatly increased through the use of balanced personality inventories. Correcting for social desirability response and enumerator effects matters when estimating the effect of personality traits on economic outcomes (but not when capturing personality structure).

Suggested Citation

  • An Huang & Paulo Santos, 2022. "Improving the reliability and validity of data on Big Five personality traits in developing countries," Monash Economics Working Papers 2022-04, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mos:moswps:2022-04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://monash-econ-wps.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/RePEc/mos/moswps/2022-04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claire M. Hart & Timothy D. Ritchie & Erica G. Hepper & Jochen E. Gebauer, 2015. "The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding Short Form (BIDR-16)," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(4), pages 21582440156, December.
    2. Arnaud Dupuy & Alfred Galichon, 2014. "Personality Traits and the Marriage Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(6), pages 1271-1319.
    3. Peter A. Savelyev & Kegon T. K. Tan, 2019. "Socioemotional Skills, Education, and Health-Related Outcomes of High-Ability Individuals," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 5(2), pages 250-280, Spring.
    4. Lee Cronbach, 1951. "Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 16(3), pages 297-334, September.
    5. Drouvelis, Michalis & Georgantzis, Nikolaos, 2019. "Does revealing personality data affect prosocial behaviour?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 409-420.
    6. Gensowski, Miriam, 2018. "Personality, IQ, and lifetime earnings," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 170-183.
    7. Arnaud Dupuy & Alfred Galichon, 2014. "Personality traits and the marriage market," Post-Print hal-03470458, HAL.
    8. Rachid Laajaj & Karen Macours & Daniel Alejandro Pinzon Hernandez & Omar Arias & Samuel D. Gosling & Jeff Potter & Marta Rubio-Codina & Renos Vakis, 2019. "Challenges to capture the big five personality traits in non-WEIRD populations," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-02306945, HAL.
    9. Meyer, Stefan & Santos, Paulo, 2020. "Correcting for bias using multidimensional measures of Socially Desirable Response," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    10. Eugenio Proto & Aldo Rustichini & Andis Sofianos, 2019. "Intelligence, Personality, and Gains from Cooperation in Repeated Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1351-1390.
    11. Burks, Stephen V. & Lewis, Connor & Kivi, Paul A. & Wiener, Amanda & Anderson, Jon E. & Götte, Lorenz & DeYoung, Colin G. & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Cognitive skills, personality, and economic preferences in collegiate success," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 30-44.
    12. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/361levbcs399s9oa154em6h9jl is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Katherine Donato & Grant Miller & Manoj Mohanan & Yulya Truskinovsky & Marcos Vera-Hernández, 2017. "Personality Traits and Performance Contracts: Evidence from a Field Experiment among Maternity Care Providers in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 506-510, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gensowski, Miriam & Gørtz, Mette & Schurer, Stefanie, 2021. "Inequality in personality over the life cycle," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 46-77.
    2. Andor, Mark Andreas & Grossmann, Igor & Hönow, Nils Christian & Tomberg, Lukas, 2023. "Wisdom and prosocial behavior," Ruhr Economic Papers 1054, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    3. Quentin Lippmann & Khushboo Surana, 2022. "The Hierarchy of Partner Preferences," Discussion Papers 22/08, Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Averett, Susan L. & Bansak, Cynthia & Smith, Julie K., 2018. "Behind Every High Earning Man Is a Conscientious Woman: A Study of the Impact of Spousal Personality on Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 11756, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Susan L. Averett & Cynthia Bansak & Julie K. Smith, 2021. "Behind Every High Earning Man is a Conscientious Woman: The Impact of Spousal Personality on Earnings and Marriage," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 29-46, March.
    6. Justine Herve & Helene Purcell & Subha Mani, 2023. "Conscientiousness Matters: How does Personality affect Labor Market Outcomes?," Fordham Economics Discussion Paper Series dp2023-05er:dp2023-05, Fordham University, Department of Economics.
    7. Doorley, Karina & Dupuy, Arnaud & Weber, Simon, 2019. "The empirical content of marital surplus in matching models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 51-54.
    8. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/38n7438p68vmqd9om4bjj6l4c is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Liang Chen & Eugene Choo & Alfred Galichon & Simon Weber, 2023. "Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium with Substitutes, with Applications to Matching and Discrete Choice Models," Papers 2309.11416, arXiv.org.
    10. Gal-Or, Esther, 2020. "Market segmentation on dating platforms," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    11. Baiyu Dong & Yu-Wei Hsieh & Xing Zhang, 2022. "Implementing Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Empirical Matching Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 59(1), pages 1-32, January.
    12. Iris Kesternich & Bettina Siflinger & James P. Smith & Franziska Valder, 2022. "Relationship Stability: Evidence from Labor and Marriage Markets," CEBI working paper series 22-20, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    13. Laurens Cherchye & Bram De Rock & Khushboo Surana & Frederic Vermeulen, 2020. "Marital Matching, Economies of Scale, and Intrahousehold Allocations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(4), pages 823-837, October.
    14. Boxho, Claire & Donald, Aletheia & Goldstein, Markus & Montalvao, Joao & Rouanet, Léa, 2020. "Assortative matching in Africa: Evidence from rural Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, and Malawi," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    15. Arnaud Dupuy & Alfred Galicho & Marc Henry, 2014. "Entropy methods for identifying hedonic models," Working Papers 2014/21, Maastricht School of Management.
    16. Carlier, Guillaume & Dupuy, Arnaud & Galichon, Alfred & Sun, Yifei, 2021. "SISTA: Learning Optimal Transport Costs under Sparsity Constraints," IZA Discussion Papers 14397, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Anton A. Cheremukhin & Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria & Antonella Tutino, 2023. "Marriage Market Sorting in the U.S," Working Papers 2023-023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 25 Sep 2024.
    18. Nie, Haifeng & Xing, Chunbing, 2019. "Education expansion, assortative marriage, and income inequality in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 37-51.
    19. Edoardo Ciscato & Alfred Galichon & Marion Goussé, 2020. "Like Attract Like? A Structural Comparison of Homogamy across Same-Sex and Different-Sex Households," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(2), pages 740-781.
    20. Edoardo Ciscato, 2019. "Matching models with and without frictions : applications to the economics of the family [Modèles d'appariement avec et sans frictions : applications à l'économie de la famille]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03411916, HAL.
    21. Adda, Jérôme & Pinotti, Paolo & Tura, Giulia, 2020. "There's More to Marriage than Love: The Effect of Legal Status and Cultural Distance on Intermarriages and Separations," CEPR Discussion Papers 14432, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    balanced questionnaire; personality traits; acquiescence bias; social desirability bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B49 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Other
    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mos:moswps:2022-04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Simon Angus (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dxmonau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.