Participating professionals also talked about several aspects that seemed to limit the desirability of the tool's implementation in their everyday practice.
To limit social desirability bias in pupils' and teachers answers we began the focus group interviews by clarifying that we were interested in both their positive and negative experiences with the FV programme.
The strengths of this study include the representativeness achieved by high participation, the use of computer-based questionnaires to limit social desirability bias, and the use of high quality biological samples [ 28].
Although we took precautions to limit social desirability bias such as training interviewers to create a climate of trust that allows free talk about such matters and using non-clinical community interviewers its effect cannot be completely eliminated.
The option of a self-administered questionnaire provided participants with greater privacy and is likely to have limited social desirability bias.
However, given the fact that the program coordinators of the NSFs reported both the facilitators and barriers to implementation, it appears there was limited social desirability bias.
Interviewers were trained and followed up during field data collection through meetings to maintain homogeneity, create a reliable climate towards DUs and to limit the social desirability bias.
Furthermore, we recognise that elements of our survey may have been limited by social desirability bias.
The validity of information in self-reports may be limited by social desirability and recall bias [ 25].
This study is limited by social desirability bias, perhaps reflected in the fact that all men responded that they would encourage their partners to get screened.
