Detecting Insufficient Effort Responding with an Infrequency Scale: Evaluating Validity and Participant Reactions

We thank three anonymous reviewers and Action Editor Scott Tonidandel for noting this potential concern that led us to conduct Study 3 and Study 4.

In a pilot study based on 59 part-time and full time working undergraduates, the eight-item infrequency scale was not significantly correlated with Paulhus’s (Paulhus 1991) impression management scale (r = − 0.20, p = ns) or self-deception scale (r = − 0.20, p = ns). If the infrequency items assessed faking (cf. Pannone 1984; Paulhus et al. 2003), the scale should be positively related to impression management and self-deception. Thus, these nonsignificant negative correlations indicate that the infrequency items measured response behavior distinct from impression management and self-deception. As suggested by an anonymous reviewer, we further examined each infrequency item’s correlations with impression management and self-deception. Five items (items #1, 2, 3, 5, and 7) had negative correlations (rs ranging from −0.23 to −0.36, ps < 0.10), while two items (items #4 and #8) had near zero correlations (rs ranging from −0.05 to 0.06, ps = ns) with the two social desirability measures. Item #6 stood out for having weak positive associations with both self-deception and impression management (rs = 0.21 and 0.11, ps = ns). Overall, however, none of the infrequency IER items was saturated with social desirability, thus alleviating the concern that these items measured socially desirable responding.

We thank Scott Tonidandel for bringing these issues to our attention.

We conjecture that the infrequency items might have grabbed the attention of some participants. That is, the presence of the infrequency items might have led some participants to find the items funny and thus had a piqued interest in the questionnaire. This is consistent with presence of infrequency items resulted in a marginal increase in enjoyment. As a result, attentive participants might have become even more attentive after reading the infrequency items, and subsequently tended to think the data quality being higher.