In psychological laboratory research, it has been suggested that different conceptions held by Ss about their tasks may lead to different reactions to the stimuli presented & hence to systematic errors, or bias. A. D. Shulman & H. J. Berman ("Role Expectations about Subjects and Experimenters in Psychological Research," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 368-380) investigated naturally occurring expectations of Ss & found three factors, which they labeled faithfulness, apprehensiveness, & suspiciousness. It is hypothesized that similar conceptions of Rs in survey research may also lead to response errors. A questionnaire consisting of 25 Dutch translations of the Shulman & Berman items (eg, honest, nervous, skeptical) was administered to 556 Rs after a face-to-face interview, in which they were asked to rate which of the 25 words described their behavior during the interview. Factor analysis with oblique rotation of data from 313 Rs yielded results remarkably similar to those of Shulman & Berman. LISREL analysis suggested that correlations between factors could be explained by a common "social desirability response set." It is concluded that the influence of R role conception has structural validity; further research is recommended. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 8 References. Modified AA.
