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Explanations of error in survey self-reports have focused on social desirability: that respondents answer questions about normative behavior to appear prosocial to interviewers. However, this paradigm fails to explain why bias occurs even in self-administered modes like mail and web surveys. We offer an alternative explanation rooted in identity theory that focuses on measurement directiveness as a cause of bias. After completing questions about physical exercise on a web survey, respondents completed a text message-based reporting procedure, sending updates on their major activities for five days. Random assignment was then made to one of two conditions: instructions mentioned the focus of the study, physical exercise, or not. Survey responses, text updates, and records from recreation facilities were compared. Direct measures generated bias—overreporting in survey measures and reactivity in the directive text condition—but the nondirective text condition generated unbiased measures. Findings are discussed in terms of identity.

The nature of religious change and the future of religion have been central questions of social science since its inception. But empirical research on this question has been quite American-centric, encouraged by the conventional wisdom that the United States is an outlier of religiosity in the developed world, and, more pragmatically, by the availability of survey data. The dramatic growth in the number and reach of cross-national surveys over the past two decades has offered a corrective. These data have allowed research on religious trends in the United States, Canada, and Europe, putting American trends into comparative relief. This research synthesis reviews the past quarter century of cross-national comparative survey research on religious behavior, focusing on religious service attendance as a commonly measured behavior that is arguably more equivalent across societies and cultures than other measures of religiosity. The lack of evidence for religious revival is highlighted, noting instead declining rates of attendance in the United States and Canada, and either declining rates or low \"bottomed-out\" stability in Western Europe, most of Eastern Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. Finally, countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are discussed to the extent that research allows, before a call for future research-in these places in particular-is made in order to correct for the Western and Christian focus of much of the research on cross-national religious trends.

Identity theory invokes two distinct but related concepts, identity salience and prominence, to explain how the organization of identities that make up the self impacts the probability that a given identity is situationally enacted. However, much extant research has failed to clearly distinguish between salience and prominence, and their empirical relationship has not been adequately investigated, impeding a solid understanding of the significance and role of each in a general theory of the self. This study examines their causal ordering using three waves of panel data from 48 universities focusing on respondents' identities as science students. Analyses strongly support a causal ordering from prominence to salience. We provide theoretical and empirical grounds to justify this ordering while acknowledging potential variation in its strength across identities. Finally, we offer recommendations about the use of prominence and salience when measures of one or both are available or when analyses use cross-sectional data.

Like that of other normative behaviors, much of the research on physical exercise is based on self-reports that are prone to overreporting. While research has focused on identifying the presence and degree of overreporting, this paper fills an important gap by investigating its causes. The explanation based in impression management will be challenged, using an explanation based in identity theory as an arguably better fitting alternative. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) a web instrument using direct survey questions, or (2) a chronological reporting procedure using text messaging. Comparisons to validation data from a reverse record check indicate significantly greater rates of overreporting in the web condition than in the text condition. Results suggest that measurement bias is associated with the importance of the respondents' exercise identity, prompted by the directness of the conventional survey question. Findings call into question the benefit of self-administration for bias reduction in measurement of normative behaviors.

The difference between religious service attendance measured using conventional surveys and time diaries has been attributed to identity processes; a high level of religious identity importance may prompt overreporting on a survey question. This article tests the hypothesized role of identity importance as an individual determinant of overreporting and the result of socially desirable behavior. A time diary measure of attendance (from the American Time Use Study 2003-2008) is imputed for conventional survey data (from the General Social Survey 2002-2008) using the multiple imputation for multiple studies procedure (Gelman, King, and Liu 1998a). Logistic regression models predicting self-reported attendance and overreported attendance are estimated using identity importance as a key covariate and controlling for demographic variables associated with attendance. Identity importance is a strong predictor of both self-reported and overreported attendance. Attendance, while a biased measure of actual behavior, may be a good indicator of religiosity.

Survey findings suggest that predominantly Muslim countries are among the most religious in the world and validate commonly held, but overly simplistic, perceptions of Muslims as extremely and uniformly religious. Existing research has demonstrated that survey estimates can give a distorted view of the reality of levels of religious practice; however, it has thus far focused exclusively on traditionally Christian, advanced Western democracies. To address this oversight, the veracity of self-reported religious practice in the Muslim world is tested using Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, and Turkey as cases for study. Comparing estimates of prayer from conventional surveys with those from time diaries, marginal rates of overreporting are estimated for each country by sex. The time-use measure of prayer is then imputed for the conventional survey data setto estimate overreporting at the respondent level and to predict overreporting using a measure of religious identity importance. Findings suggest that overreporting of prayer occurs in each country considered, although more consistently for women than for men. Moreover, religious identity importance is strongly correlated with overreporting of prayer, suggesting that a similar mechanism may promote the measurement error for overreported prayer in the Muslim world and overreported church attendance in the West.

This article examines empirically ideas initially proposed in speculative work by Ervin and Stryker dealing with what could be understood about human social behavior and interaction by bringing together self-esteem and identity theories. Necessary to that task is distinguishing between two key and often conflated concepts of identity theory, salience and prominence. We argue that role-specific self-efficacy, embedded in self-esteem theory, is a precedent and a product of the identity theory model and global self-efficacy is a link from role-identities to the self-concept through the impact of global self-efficacy on prominence. Findings support a hypothesized feedback loop from role-specific self-efficacy to prominence to salience and back to role-specific self-efficacy.

This study investigates what role, if any, nonresponse plays in inflating survey estimates of religious behavior, using a multimode survey designed to allow estimation of nonresponse bias. A sample of 3,000 Boston-area households drawn from an address-based frame was randomly divided into two subsamples, contacted by mail, and invited to participate in a survey. The first subsample was asked to complete an interactive voice response interview. The second subsample was asked to complete a survey by telephone if a number was available for the address or by personal interview if not. Finally, random samples of nonrespondents were recontacted for a personal interview. Comparison of attendance estimates from initial interviews with nonrespondent interviews within sample segments yields minor or minimal differences that are not statistically significant. Findings suggest that the mechanism generating survey nonresponse is unlikely to be a major cause of bias in religious service attendance estimates in this study.

Background Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) may represent a substantial proportion of major depressive disorder (MDD); however, the risk of mortality in TRD is still incompletely assessed. Methods Data were obtained from Optum Clinformatics™ Extended, a US claims database. Date of the first antidepressant (AD) dispensing was designated as the index date for study entry and 6 months prior to that was considered the baseline period. Patients with MDD aged ≥ 18 years, index date between January 1, 2008 and September 30, 2015, no AD claims during baseline, and continuous enrollment in the database during baseline were included. Patients who started a third AD regimen after two regimens of appropriate duration were included in the TRD cohort. All-cause mortality was compared between patients with TRD and non-TRD MDD using a proportional hazards model and Kaplan–Meier estimate with TRD status being treated as a time-varying covariate. The model was adjusted for study year, age, gender, depression diagnosis, substance use disorder, psychiatric comorbidities, and Charlson comorbidity index. Results Out of 355,942 patients with MDD, 34,176 (9.6%) met the criterion for TRD. TRD was associated with a significantly higher mortality compared with non-TRD MDD (adjusted HR: 1.29; 95% CI 1.22–1.38; p  < 0.0001). Survival time was significantly shorter in the TRD cohort compared with the non-TRD MDD cohort ( p  < 0.0001). Conclusions Patients with TRD had a higher all-cause mortality compared with non-TRD MDD patients.

Background The most widely used surveys for assessing patient health care experiences in the U.S. are the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys. Studies examining the associations of language and ethnicity with responses to CAHPS surveys have yielded inconsistent findings. More research is needed to assess the effect of responding to CAHPS surveys in Spanish. Methods Subjects were patients who had received care at a study community health center in Connecticut within 6 or 12 months of being sent a CAHPS survey that asks about care experiences. The survey included four multi-item measures of care plus an overall rating of the provider. Sampled patients were mailed dual language (English and Spanish) cover letters and questionnaires. Those who did not respond after follow-up mailings were contacted by bilingual interviewers to complete the survey by telephone. We tested three hypotheses for any observed differences by ethnicity and language: 1. Spanish speakers are more likely than others to choose extreme response options. 2. The semantic meaning of the Spanish translation is not the same as the English version of the questions, resulting in Spanish speakers giving different answers because of meaning differences. 3. Spanish speakers have different expectations regarding their health care than those who answer in English. Analyses compared the answers on the survey measures for three groups: non-Hispanics answering in English, Hispanics answering in English, and Hispanics answering in Spanish. Results The overall response rate was 45%. After adjusting for differences in demographic characteristics and self-rated health, those answering in Spanish gave significantly more positive reports than the other two groups on three of the five measures, and higher than the non-Hispanic respondents on a fourth. Conclusions Those answering in Spanish gave more positive reports of their medical experiences than Hispanics and non-Hispanics answering in English. Whether these results reflect different response tendencies, different standards for care, or better care experiences is a key issue in whether CAHPS responses in Spanish need adjustment to make them comparable to responses in English.