Effects of applicant response distortion on the relationship between personality trait scores and cognitive ability

Supervised Construct Scoring to Reduce Personality Assessment Length: A Field Study and Introduction to the Short 10

Personality assessments help identify qualified job applicants when making hiring decisions and are used broadly in the organizational sciences. However, many existing personality measures are quite lengthy, and companies and researchers frequently seek ways to shorten personality scales. The current research investigated the effectiveness of a new scale-shortening method called supervised construct scoring (SCS), testing the efficacy of this method across two applied samples. Using a combination of machine learning with content validity considerations, we show that multidimensional personality scales can be significantly shortened while maintaining reliability and validity, and especially when compared to traditional shortening methods. In Study 1, we shortened a 100-item personality assessment of DeYoung et al.'s 10 facets, producing a scale 26% the original length. SCS scores exhibited strong evidence of reliability, convergence with full scale scores, and criterion-related validity. This measure, labeled the Short 10, is made freely available. In Study 2, we applied SCS to shorten an operational police personality assessment. By using SCS, we reduced test length to 25% of the original length while maintaining similar levels of reliability and criterion-related validity when predicting job performance ratings.

A Meta-Analysis of the Faking Resistance of Forced-Choice Personality Inventories

This study presents a comprehensive meta-analysis on the faking resistance of forced-choice (FC) inventories. The results showed that (1) FC inventories show resistance to faking behavior; (2) the magnitude of faking is higher in experimental contexts than in real-life selection processes, suggesting that the effects of faking may be, in part, a laboratory phenomenon; and (3) quasi-ipsative FC inventories are more resistant to faking than the other FC formats. Smaller effect sizes were found for conscientiousness when the quasi-ipsative format was used (δ = 0.49 vs. δ = 1.27 for ipsative formats). Also, the effect sizes were smaller for the applicant samples than for the experimental samples. Finally, the contributions and practical implications of these findings are discussed.