PO032: Disciplinary Disproportionality: The Role of Bias and Social Desirability



This study examined the role that social desirability and bias play in questionnaire research on disciplinary disproportionality. Preservice teachers read one of three versions of a scenario about a student behaving defiantly and then answered questions about the severity of the behavior, the likelihood of reoccurrence, and how they would respond. Attendees will learn how bias and social desirability affected preservice teachers' responses based on the information given in the scenario about the student's ethnicity.


Amity H. Noltemeyer, Miami University, Oxford, OH; Claire Kunesh, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA