A comparison of self-report, systematic observation and third-party judgments of church attendance in a rural Fijian Village

Investor logo

Warning

This publication doesn't include Faculty of Sports Studies. It includes Faculty of Arts. Official publication website can be found on muni.cz.
Authors

SHAVER John Hayward WHITE Thomas AJ VAKAOTI Patrick LANG Martin

Year of publication 2021
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source PLOS ONE
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

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.
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.

More info