# Validating the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Reporting in a low literacy adolescent population in Burkina Faso

## TL;DR

The study tested a survey tool in Burkina Faso to detect socially desirable responses but found poor performance in a low-literacy adolescent population.

## Contribution

The work provides a novel validation of the BIDR scale in a low-education, rural African population.

## Key findings

- The original BIDR scale showed poor fit and reliability in the study population.
- A revised 11-item, 2-factor structure was proposed but also showed poor fit and low reliability.
- Measurement invariance was confirmed for age but not for gender.

## Abstract

Socially desirable responses to survey questions may be universal, but scales to capture the phenomenon are unvalidated in low-education and resource-limited settings. We therefore conducted a validation of the 16-item Balanced Inventory of Desirable Reporting (BIDR) short form in a two-round health survey of 1291 12–20 year-olds in rural Burkina Faso in 2017 and 2018. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the scale’s designed dimensionality found poor fit (CFI = 0.50, TLI = 0.42, RMSEA = 0.10, SRMR = 0.08). Exploratory factor analysis of Wave 1 data suggested a novel 11-item, 2-factor structure, with all but two of the original scale’s Self Deceptive Enhancement items discarded. CFA in Wave 2 using this novel structure gave poor fit indices (CFI = 0.62, TLI = 0.51, RMSEA = 0.10, SRMR = 0.07), test-retest reliability was low (ICC(A,1) = 0.06, Pearson’s r = 0.06, R2 = 0.004) and internal consistency was unsatisfactory (α and ω < 0.70) across waves for both scales. Measurement invariance was confirmed for age but not gender. This failure of BIDR implementation may reflect issues with item translation and delivery, locally appropriate content or use of reverse-coding in a low-education sample. It is possible, but less likely, that it reflects non-universality of the SDR construct. Our work highlights the importance of validating instruments in new study populations.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-23145-1.