A comparison of self-report, systematic observation and third-party judgments of church attendance in a rural Fijian Village
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | PLOS ONE |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0257160 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257160 |
| Keywords | religious ritual; self-report bias; third-party judgments; |
| Description | Social desirability reporting leads to over estimations of church attendance. To date, researchers have treated over-reporting of church attendance as a general phenomenon, and have been unable to determine the demographic correlates of inaccuracy in these self-reports. By comparing over eight months of observational data on church attendance (n = 48 services) to self-report in a rural Fijian village, we find that 1) self-report does not reliably predict observed attendance, 2) women with two or more children (? 2) are more likely to over-report their attendance than women with fewer children (? 1), and 3) self-report of religiosity more reliably predicts observed church attendance than does self-report of church attendance. Further, we find that third-party judgements of church attendance by fellow villagers are more reliably associated with observed church attendance than self-report. Our findings suggest that researchers interested in estimating behavioral variation, particularly in domains susceptible to social desirability effects, should consider developing and employing third-party methods to mitigate biases inherent to self-report. |
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