Independence of Hand's Acquiescence and Social Desirability Scales

Abstract

Hand's Acquiescence Scale (HAcq) and Hand's Social Desirability Scale (HSD) have been reported to be independent measures (Hand, 1964). However, there are 30 items common to both scales. An abbreviated HAcq (AHAcq) was constructed by removing from HAcq the items which occurred on both HAcq and HSD. The correlation between HAcq and HSD was −0.10 ( p > .10). However, the correlation between AHAcq and HSD was −0.19 ( p < .01). These results indicate HAcq and HSD are not independent when the effect of the overlapping items is removed.