Faking self-reports of health behavior: a comparison between a within- and a between-subjects design.

Background: This study examines people's ability to fake their reported health behavior and explores the magnitude of such response distortion concerning faking of preventive health behavior and health risk behavior. As health behavior is a sensitive topic, people usually prefer privacy about it or they wish to create a better image of themselves (Fekken et al., 2012; Levy et al.