Social desirability responses in jewish and arab children in Israel

Abstract

As part of a larger study on personality characteristics of children from different cultural groups in Israel, a Hebrew and Arab version of the Children's Social Desirability Scale (CSD) was administered to a sample of 1024 Jewish and Arab students in grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. The Jewish subjects in the Israeli sample had a significantly higher SD level than the American standardization sample, which replicates earlier findings by Crandall and Gozali (1969). Comparisons within the overall sample show that the Arabs had a significantly higher SD score than their Jewish counterparts at all ages. Within the Arab subsample, Moslems scored significantly higher than Christians; in the Jewish subsample no significant differences were found between religious and nonreligious subjects. No overall sex differences were found. These findings can be viewed against the background of certain specific cultural and psychological variables within these two major cultural-ethnic population groups in Israel. © 1976, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.