Abstract

RIBAS JR, Rodolfo de Castro; MOURA, Maria Lucia Seidl de  and  HUTZ, Claudio S.. Brazilian adaptation of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Aval. psicol. [online]. 2004, vol.3, n.2, pp. 83-92. ISSN 1677-0471.

The purpose of the present study was the Brazilian Portuguese adaptation of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Social desirability reflects a bias that people have to respond in ways that are considered as socially acceptable and to deny association with opinions or behaviors considered as undesirable. Such bias might jeopardize the validity of research and must be controlled. The MC-SDS, one of the most used scales to assess social desirability, is composed by 33 items. The process of adaptation of the scale involved translation of the instrument, revision by an independent committee, and back translation. At first, 22 bilingual subjects responded the original scale in English and to its Portuguese version with an interval of one week. Agreement and the correlation indexes between the original and the Portuguese version were considered adequate. Next, the Portuguese version was responded by 407 adults. Of those, 108 responded again to the scale after an interval of two or 15 months. An exploratory factor analysis showed that a one- factor solution, as proposed by the original study, is appropriated. The internal consistency was also adequate (Cronbach's Alpha = .79). Test-retest (even with an interval longer than a year) showed temporal stability for social desirability. The results suggest that the Brazilian version is equivalent to the original scale and that its psychometric characteristics indicate that it might be appropriate to use it in Brazil to assess social desirability.

Keywords : Social desirability; Marlowe-Crowne; Psychological assessment.

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