ArticleHealth psychology and behavioral medicine2021
Faking self-reports of health behavior: a comparison between a within- and a between-subjects design.
Article in Health psychology and behavioral medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social Cognitive Theory and Physical Activity: Examining Gender-Based Prediction Patterns and Theoretical Validity.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- How Valid Is Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory to Explain Physical Activity Behavior?European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025Article
- Fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, and functional fitness among older adults in urban Alaska.International journal of circumpolar health · 2024Article
- Specific health beliefs mediate sex differences in food choice.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Article
- Prevalence and effects of sleep-disordered breathing on middle-aged patients with sedative-free generalized anxiety disorder: A prospective case-control study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- A latent profile analysis of the sources of physical activity-specific self-efficacy.Health psychology openArticle
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundThis study examines people's ability to fake their reported health behavior and explores the magnitude of such response distortion concerning faking of preventive health behavior and health risk behavior. As health behavior is a sensitive topic, people usually prefer privacy about it or they wish to create a better image of themselves (Fekken et al., 2012; Levy et al., 2018). Nevertheless, health behavior is often assessed by self-report questionnaires that are prone to faking. Therefore, it is important to examine the possible impact of such faking.
methodsTo replicate the findings and test their robustness, two study designs were realized. In the within-subjects-design, 142 participants repeatedly answered a health behavior questionnaire with an instruction to answer honestly, fake good, and fake bad. In the between-subjects design, 128 participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups that filled out the health behavior questionnaire with only one of the three instructions.
resultsBoth studies showed that successful faking of self-reported preventive and health risk behavior was possible. The magnitude of such faking effects was very large in the within-subjects design and somewhat smaller in the between-subjects design.
conclusionEven though each design has its inherent merits and problems, caution is indicated regarding faking effects.
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