Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale — Short Form (Form C)
A 13-item true/false measure of socially desirable responding — the tendency to describe oneself in an overly favorable, socially approved light. Reynolds's (1982) Form C short form of the Marlowe–Crowne scale. Higher scores indicate a stronger socially desirable response style; there is no diagnostic cutoff.
At a glance
Detailed write-up pending
A full, citation-backed scientific write-up for this scale — overview, clinical use, and psychometrics in the voice of a dissertation "Measures" section — has not yet been authored. To honor the platform's no-fabricated-sources rule, this page currently shows only the verified registry facts above (item count, structure, scoring, and any published norms). No validity coefficients, reliability figures, or citations are shown here that cannot be traced to a named source; the authored write-up will be added once its sources have been read and recorded in the plan-integrity file.
Example item
“It is sometimes hard for me to go on with my work if I am not encouraged.”
Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.
Scoring & interpretation
Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.
Source & citation
Reynolds, W. M. (1982). Development of reliable and valid short forms of the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38(1), 119–125.
Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Short Form C (Reynolds, W. M., 1982). Public domain; free for clinical and research use with attribution.