Methodological Issues in Whistle-blowing Intentions Research: Addressing the Social Desirability Bias and Order Effect Bias

The issues of social desirability bias and order effect bias are common problems in ethics. Methodologically, these two problems may weaken the study's validity and reliability thus, making the results of the study invalid. Utilizing vignettes in whistle-blowing research may further add to these problems as the case scenario in the vignettes may enhance respondents’ social desirability bias and the sequence of presentation order of vignettes may then present the problem of vignettes’ order effect bias. The paper addresses these two problems by statistically examining the effects of these two types of bias within the study of whistle-blowing intentions.