Examining the “Urban Legend” of Common Method Bias: Nine Common Errors and Their Impact

In this paper, we examine the "urban legend" of CMB and question the impact of nine common errors that researchers make when designing survey instrument. We define the nine most common errors and implement these errors in an empirical study of 537 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology course at a large southeastern university. By analyzing this data in PLS, we discover that each of the sources of CMB differently impacts the measurement and structural model for researchers.