{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,24]],"date-time":"2026-03-24T15:38:15Z","timestamp":1774366695111,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":17,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]],"date-time":"2022-08-25T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1661385600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS ONE"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Faking in a psychological test is often observed whenever an examinee may gain an advantage from it. Although techniques are available to identify a faker, they cannot identify the specific questions distorted by faking. This work evaluates the effectiveness of term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF)\u2014an information retrieval mathematical tool used in search engines and language representations\u2014in identifying single-item faked responses. We validated the technique on three datasets containing responses to the 10-item Big Five questionnaire (total of 694 participants, respectively 221, 243, and 230) in three faking situations. Each participant responded twice, once faking to achieve an objective in one of three contexts (one to obtain child custody and two to land a job) and once honestly. The proposed TF-IDF model has proven very effective in separating honest from dishonest responses\u2014with the honest ones having low TF-IDF values and the dishonest ones having higher values\u2014and in identifying which of the 10 responses to the questionnaire were distorted in the dishonest condition. We also provide examples of the technique in a single-case evaluation.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0272970","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]],"date-time":"2022-08-25T17:55:58Z","timestamp":1661450158000},"page":"e0272970","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Identifying single-item faked responses in personality tests: A new TF-IDF-based method"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Alberto","family":"Purpura","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Dora","family":"Giorgianni","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Graziella","family":"Orr\u00f9","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Giulia","family":"Melis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6026-0133","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Giuseppe","family":"Sartori","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]]},"reference":[{"key":"pone.0272970.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"330","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-67092-8_21","volume-title":"P5 medicine and justice","author":"G. 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Rammstedt","year":"2007","journal-title":"Journal of research in Personality"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0272970.ref006","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"159","DOI":"10.1111\/bmsp.12086","article-title":"Response style analysis with threshold and multi\u2010process IRT models: A review and tutorial","volume":"70","author":"U. B\u00f6ckenholt","year":"2017","journal-title":"British journal of mathematical and statistical psychology"},{"key":"pone.0272970.ref007","article-title":"Faking detection improved: Adopting a Likert item response process tree model","author":"T. Sun","year":"2021","journal-title":"Organizational Research Methods"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0272970.ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2758","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eswa.2010.08.066","article-title":"A comparative study of TF-IDF, LSI and multi-words for text classification","volume":"38","author":"W. 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Birkeland","year":"2006","journal-title":"International Journal of Selection and Assessment"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0272970.ref012","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"378","DOI":"10.1080\/14789940802456686","article-title":"Experimental simulation: Type of malingering scenario makes a difference","volume":"20","author":"H. Merckelbach","year":"2009","journal-title":"The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology"},{"key":"pone.0272970.ref013","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"135","DOI":"10.1016\/j.paid.2014.11.053","article-title":"An Italian version of the 10-item Big Five Inventory: An application to hedonic and utilitarian shopping values","volume":"76","author":"G. Guido","year":"2015","journal-title":"Personality and Individual Differences"},{"issue":"1","key":"pone.0272970.ref014","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"32","DOI":"10.1177\/1470785317744856","article-title":"Trap questions in online surveys: Results from three web survey experiments","volume":"60","author":"M. Liu","year":"2018","journal-title":"International Journal of Market Research"},{"key":"pone.0272970.ref015","article-title":"Evaluation: from precision, recall and F-measure to ROC, informedness, markedness and correlation","author":"D. Powers","year":"2020","journal-title":"arXiv preprint arXiv"},{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0272970.ref016","article-title":"The balanced inventory of desirable responding short form (BIDR-16)","volume":"5","author":"C.M. Hart","year":"2015","journal-title":"Sage Open"},{"key":"pone.0272970.ref017","article-title":"IDF term weighting and IR research lessons","author":"J.K. Sp\u00e4rck","year":"2004","journal-title":"Journal of documentation"}],"container-title":["PLOS ONE"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0272970","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]],"date-time":"2022-08-25T17:56:27Z","timestamp":1661450187000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dx.plos.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0272970"}},"subtitle":[],"editor":[{"given":"Paolo","family":"Roma","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"editor","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]]},"references-count":17,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0272970","relation":{},"ISSN":["1932-6203"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1932-6203","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2022,8,25]]}}}