ArticleEconomics and human biology2020
Is the public sweet on sugary beverages? Social desirability bias and sweetened beverage taxes.
Article in Economics and human biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- An umbrella review of the acceptability of fiscal and pricing policies to reduce diet-related noncommunicable disease.Nutrition reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Progress toward the 2030 targets of Brazil's Strategic Action Plan for noncommunicable diseases: a time-series and projection analysis of risk factors.Lancet regional health. Americas · 2026Article
- Unraveling honest responding: a systematic review on the effectiveness of social desirability bias reduction methods in survey research.Quality & quantity · 2026Article
- Who Likes Sweets? Sweet Patterns: Influence of Sex, Age, Body Mass Index, Smoking and Olfactory Efficiency on the Consumption of Sweet Products.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Metabolomics signatures of sweetened beverages and added sugar are related to anthropometric measures of adiposity in young individuals: results from a cohort study.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2024Article
- The carbon isotope ratio of breath is elevated by short-term and long-term added sugar and animal protein intake in a controlled feeding study.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2024Article
- Evaluation of the sugar-sweetened beverage tax in Oakland, United States, 2015-2019: A quasi-experimental and cost-effectiveness study.PLoS medicine · 2023Article
- Public Support for the Imposition of a Tax on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and the Determinants of Such Support in Spain.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Measuring public opinion and acceptability of prevention policies: an integrative review and narrative synthesis of methods.Health research policy and systems · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Social desirability bias has been documented in self-reported diet as well as in voting behavior, but not in regards to sweetened beverage consumption or sweetened beverage taxes. We find evidence that respondents in a mixed-mode opinion survey exhibit social desirability bias in both reported sweetened beverage consumption and beliefs about the health and economic benefits of sweetened beverage taxes. We do so in a study of 1704 adults residing in Seattle, Minneapolis, and the D.C. metro area. Phone respondents in our survey under-report sweetened beverage consumption by 0.63 beverages per week relative to web respondents (average web respondent consumption is 3.55 beverages per week). They also over-report their beliefs about the positive health and economic impacts of sweetened beverage taxes by 0.54 points in an 18-point index (average web respondent index score is 2.79). These differences are measured after we control for selection into survey mode by using matching methods, and we interpret them as occurring due to social desirability bias. In contrast to these findings, there is no modal difference in respondents' stated approval of sweetened beverage taxes, and so we conclude that this question is not subject to social desirability bias.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.