Jill E. Ellingson

Social desirability corrections in personality measurement: Issues of applicant comparison and construct validity

Research investigating the validity of personality measures has established these measures as useful selection tools. However, personality measures are vulnerable to response distortion leading to employer concerns about the influence of applicant faking, with specific concerns about the influence of social desirability. A traditional method used to circumvent this is the application of a correction based on a social desirability scale score. This study sought to evaluate whether such corrections are effective tools for removing the influence of intentional distortion. A within-subjects design facilitated comparisons between honest, faked, and corrected scores. The goal was to evaluate whether a social desirability correction allows one to approximate an individuals honest score. The results suggest that a social desirability correction is ineffective and fails to produce a corrected score that approximates an honest score. Results are interpreted with respect to applicant comparison and construct validity.

Investigating the influence of social desirability on personality factor structure.

This study provides a comprehensive investigation into whether social desirability alters the factor structure of personality measures. The study brought together 4 large data sets wherein different organizational samples responded to different personality measures. This facilitated conducting 4 separate yet parallel investigations. Within each data set, individuals identified through a social desirability scale as responding in an honest manner were grouped together, and individuals identified as responding in a highly socially desirable manner were grouped together. Using various analyses, the fit of higher order factor structure models was compared across the 2 groups. Results were the same for each data set. Social desirability had little influence on the higher order factor structures that characterized the relationships among the scales of the personality measures.

Substance versus style: A new look at social desirability in motivating contexts

Although there is an emerging consensus that social desirability does not meaningfully affect criterion-related validity, several researchers have reaffirmed the argument that social desirability degrades the construct validity of personality measures. Yet, most research demonstrating the adverse consequences of faking for construct validity uses a fake-good instruction set. The consequence of such a manipulation is to exacerbate the effects of response distortion beyond what would be expected under realistic circumstances (e.g., an applicant setting). The research reported in this article was designed to assess these issues by using real-world contexts not influenced by artificial instructions. Results suggest that response distortion has little impact on the construct validity of personality measures used in selection contexts.

Personality assessment across selection and development contexts: insights into response distortion.

Insight into applicant intentional distortion on personality measures was obtained by comparing individual responses provided in an organizational context with high motivation to distort (selection) and those provided in an organizational context with low motivation to distort (development). An assessment firm database containing responses to the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) was searched for within-subject data. Seven hundred and thirteen individuals were identified as having completed the CPI twice: once for selection purposes and once for development purposes or twice for the same purpose. Scale-score analyses both within and across contexts revealed a limited degree of response distortion.

Understanding Faking Behavior Through the Lens of Motivation: An Application of VIE Theory

This article proposes a conceptual framework to explain faking behavior on self-report personality inventories. Unlike prior conceptualizations, this framework is simultaneously parsimonious yet inclusive. The theory posits that all determinants of faking behavior occur through valence, instrumentality, expectancy, or ability to fake. We review the faking literature to show how the multitude of factors found to influence faking can be concisely modeled within our framework. We intend for this theory to serve as a guide for future research on faking behavior, and we encourage researchers to explore and adopt the framework in the interest of enabling a more theoretically satisfying approach to the study of faking.

The Impact of Coworker Support on Employee Turnover in the Hospitality Industry

Employee turnover rates are among the highest for entry-level employees in the hospitality industry. Research focused on identifying the antecedents of turnover in this employment context has been limited, however. To address this gap in the literature, the present study examined the impact of coworker support on turnover with a sample of 188 servers from a national restaurant chain. Specifically, this study assessed the impact of coworker instrumental support and coworker emotional support on turnover. The results demonstrated that coworker emotional support was negatively related to turnover. However, coworker instrumental support was positively related to turnover, counter to the hypothesized relationship. This counterintuitive finding leads us to consider the role of coworker support on turnover in a new light.

Personality Retesting for Managing Intentional Distortion

Self-report personality questionnaires often contain validity scales designed to flag individuals who intentionally distort their responses toward a more favorable characterization of themselves. Yet, there are no clear directives on how scores on these scales should be used by administrators when making high-stakes decisions about respondents. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether administrator-initiated retesting of flagged individuals represents a viable response to managing intentional distortion on personality questionnaires. We explored the effectiveness of retesting by considering whether retest responses are more accurate representations of a flagged individuals personality characteristics. A comparison of retest scores to a baseline measure of personality indicated that such scores were more accurate. Retesting should only work as a strategy for dealing with intentional distortion when individuals choose to respond more accurately the second time. Thus, we further explored the emotional reaction to being asked to retest as one possible explanation of why individuals who engage in intentional distortion respond more accurately upon retest.

Constituent attachment and voluntary turnover in low-wage/low-skill service work.

This paper draws on life stage theory, ethnographic research conducted in the service sector, and evidence for secondary segmentation within the low-wage/low-skill labor force to offer evidence that social bond development with coworkers can help reduce the high rate of turnover observed in low-wage/low-skill service work. Contrary to the belief that these employees will leave before social ties can develop, constituent attachment was found to be the only significant predictor of turnover in 2 samples of front-line service workers in a casual dining, national restaurant chain after controlling for other aspects of work that can create a sense of attachment to a job, and other job attitudes, such as satisfaction and commitment. However, the effect was dependent on developmental life stage. Constituent attachment reduced turnover among workers classified as emerging adults, whereas constituent attachment did little to affect turnover among nonemerging adults. Implications of the results are discussed with respect to the value of considering segmentation in future research on turnover in the service sector and the use of life stage theory for understanding the leaving behavior of workers in different stages of adulthood.