Personality test item validity: Insights from "self" and "other" research and theory

Personality and Individual Differences

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 103-117

  Gordon, Eric D ^a   Holden, Ronald R ^a  

^a QUEEN S UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Item writing; Personality scales; Psychometrics; Test validity

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032114354     PISSN: 01918869     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0191-8869(98)00010-5     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Angleitner, A., John, O. P., & Lohn F. J. (1986). Its what you ask and how you ask it: An itemmetric analysis of personality questionnaires. In A. Angleitner, & J. S. Wiggins, Personality assessment via questionnaires (pp. 61-108). New York: Springer-Verlag.
2. Broughton, R. (1984). A prototype strategy for construction of personality scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1334-1346.
3. Broughton, R. (1990). The prototype concept in personality assessment. Canadian Psychology, 31, 26-37.
4. Buss, D. M., & Craik, K. H. (1983). The act frequency approach to personality. Psychological Review, 90, 105-126.
5. Ebbesen, E. B. (1980). Cognitive processes in understanding ongoing behavior. In R. Hastie, T. M. Ostrom, E. B. Ebbesen, R. S. Wyer Jr., D. L. Hamilton, & D. E. Carlston, Person memory: The cognitive basis of social perception (pp. 179-225). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
6. Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the big-five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26-42.
7. Gordon, E. D. ( 1993). The psychometric effects of item response processes and test-taking response strategy on structured personality test items. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Queen's University, Kingston, Ont.
8. Gordon, E. D., & Holden, R. R. (1996). Use of item ratings to examine personality test item cognitive response processes. Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 897-905.
9. Gough, H. G. (1975). Manual for the California Psychological Inventory (rev. ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
10. Hastie, R. (1981). Schematic principles in human memory. In E. T. Higgins, C. P. Herman, & M. P. Zanna, Social cognition: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 1, pp. 39-88). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
11. Hastie, R., & Carlston, D. (1980). Theoretical issues in person memory. In R. Hastie, T. M. Ostrom, E. B. Ebbesen, R. S. Wyer Jr., D. L. Hamilton, & D. E. Carlston, Person memory: The cognitive basis of social perception (pp. 1-53). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
12. Higgins, E. T., & Bargh, J. A. (1987). Social cognition and social perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 38, 369-425.
13. Holden, R. R., & Fekken, G. C. (1990). Structured psychopathological test item characteristics and validity. Psychological Assessment, 2, 35-40.
14. Jackson, D. N. (1984). Personality Research Form manual (3rd ed.). Port Huron, MI: Sigma Assessment Systems.
15. Klein, S. B., Loftus, J., & Burton, H. A. (1989). Two self-reference effects: the importance of distinguishing between self-descriptiveness judgements and autobiographical retrieval in self-referent encoding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 853-865.
16. Klein, S. B., Loftus, J., & Plog, A. E. (1992). Trait judgements about the self: evidence from the encoding specificity paradigm. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 730-735.
17. Knowles, E. S. (1988). Item context effects on personality scales: measuring changes the measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 312-320.
18. Loch, S., Holden, R. R., & Fekken, G. C. (1988). Enhancing personality test item validity by homogenizing respondents' cognitive strategies. Paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Montreal, Que.
19. Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 63-78.
20. Moskowitz, G. B., & Roman, R. J. (1992). Spontaneous trait inferences as self-generated primes: implications for conscious social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 728-738.
21. Nowakowska, M. (1970). A model of answering to a questionnaire item. Acta Psychologies, 34, 420-439.
22. Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric theory (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
23. Ostrom, T. M., Lingle, J. H., Pryor, J. B., & Geva, N. (1980). Cognitive organization of person impressions. In R. Hastie, T. M. Ostrom, E. B. Ebbesen, R. S. Wyer Jr., D. L. Hamilton, & D. E. Carlston, Person memory: The cognitive basis of social perception (pp. 55-88). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
24. Riemann, R., & Angleitner, A. (1993). Inferring interpersonal traits from behavior: act prototypicality vs conceptual similarity of trait concepts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 356-364.
25. Rogers, T. B. (1971). The process of responding to personality items: Some issues, a theory and some research. Multivariate Behavioral Research Monographs, 6.
26. Rogers, T. B. (1974). An analysis of the stages underlying the process of responding to personality items. Acta Psychologica, 38, 205-213.
27. Rogers, T. B. (1974). An analysis of two central stages underlying responding to personality items: the self-referent decision and response selection. Journal of Research in Personality, 8, 128-138.
28. Rogers, T. B. (1977). Self-reference in memory: recognition of personality items. Journal of Research in Personality, 11, 295-305.
29. Rogers, T. B. ( 1981). A model of the self as an aspect of the human information processing system. In N. Cantor, & J. F. Kihlstrom, Personality, cognition, and social interaction (pp. 193-214). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
30. Rogers, T. B., Kuiper, N. A., & Kirker, W. S. (1977). Self-reference and the encoding of personal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 677-688.
31. Schriesheim, C. A., Kopelman, R. E., & Solornan, E. (1989). The effect of grouped vs randomized questionnaire format on scale reliability and validity: a three-study investigation. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 49, 487-508.
32. Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. Jr. (1989). Person memory and judgement. Psychological Review, 96, 58-83.
33. Turner, C. G., & Fiske, D. W. (1968). Item quality and appropriateness of response processes. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 28, 297-315.
34. Winter, L., & Uleman, J. S. (1984). When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 237-252.
35. Wyer, R. S., Jr., & Srull, T. K. (1981). Category accessibility: Some theoretical and empirical issues concerning the processing of social stimulus information. In E. T. Higgins, C. P. Herman, & M. P. Zanna, Social cognition: The Ontario Symposium (Vol. 1, pp. 161-197). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.