Contents: Integrity test, software, reliability, honesty, trustworthy, trustworthiness,
dependable, dependability, reliable, work, worker, work effectiveness.
Personality Test:
The Integrity Test & Software
Integrity Defined
Integrity refers to a person's tendency to be honest, dependable, trustworthy,
reliable, and prosocial (as against antisocial). Integrity is an extremely
important quality of workers. The Integrity Scale described here has been
found to contribute to work success, more generally to career and financial
success. It also has been found to be a positive correlate of emotional
success (or general psychological adjustment), success in relationships, and
overall life success (Mehrabian, 2000).
Integrity Scale Software
Software for administering, scoring, and interpreting the Integrity Scale is available.
It runs on IBM-compatible computers and provides (a) percentile scores and
equivalent z-scores plus brief interpretation of these scores for each person tested and (b) a database of all scores (percentile plus z-score) for all individuals tested. The software is extremely easy to use and is password protected so that the Administrator can control access to the database of results. In this way, individuals being tested cannot have access to the results, unless the Administrator chooses to report such results to them.
A common problem in personality testing is that some respondents attempt to slant their answers to make good impressions and, as a result, test results become misleading. When respondents slant answers, scores on socially desirable traits become inflated or greater than they would have been in the absence of response slanting. The software for the Integrity Scale includes a built-in feature to help detect when such response slanting/faking occurs and warns the tester when results become "unacceptable."
Scale Description
The Integrity Scale is compsed of two parts (Scenarios, Questionnaire)
- Part 1 (Scenarios): Consists of 15 realistic scenarios from everyday
life designed to elicit gradations of honesty-dishonesty and trustworthiness.
For each scenario, respondents select one of several multiple-choices to
indicate their probable behavior in that situation (scenario).
- Part 2 (Questionnaire): Consists of 8 statements. Respondents use a
9-point scale to indicate how much they agree or disagree with each
statement. The Questionnaire Part can serve also as an abbreviated (2-3
minute) version of the scale.
Other features of the Integrity Scale are as follows:
- Administration: does not require tester to be present
- Test format: scenarios, questionnaire
- Appropriate population: English fluency, ages 15 and older
- Time required for administration: approximately 10 minutes
- Scoring: hand scored; yields 3 scores (one for each part and a total scale score); with software, scoring and interpretation are automated
- Manual: contains complete scale, scoring directions, norms
- Background literature: includes a book-length monograph that provides extensive reliability and validity data on the scale (Mehrabian, 2000)
Scale Validity
Experimental work, reported by Mehrabian (2000), showed that Integrity
Scale scores were positive correlates of almost all major facets of life success,
including emotional success (i.e., general emotional well-being), relationship
success, work success, career and financial success, and overall life success.
The monograph (Mehrabian, 2000) contains considerable detailed information on
validity of the Integrity Scale. You will find the following plus additional information bearing on the Integrity Scale in Mehrabian's (2000) monograph:
- Page 166 (Table 3) for reliability.
- Page 167 (Factor 3) and again pages 174-175 (Table 7) for correlations with other personality scales.
- Pages 177-178 and again page 181 (bottom paragraph) for key validity data.
- Pages 182-183 (Table 10) and again page 184 (top two paragraphs) for correlations with various measures of life success.
- Page 198, second paragraph, for distinct contributions to life success.
- Page 203 (Table 20) for correlations with the PAD Temperament scales – the moderately strong, positive correlation with Trait Pleasure (a very general measure of psychological adjustment) is noteworthy.
- Page 215, bottom paragraph, for predicting life success.
References
Mehrabian, A. (2000). Beyond IQ: Broad-based measurement of individual
success potential or "emotional intelligence." Genetic, Social, and
General Psychology Monographs, 126, 133-239.
Copyright© 1995-2010 by Albert Mehrabian