The authors examined and compared the susceptibility of three Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scale sets (Clinical, Restructured Clinical [RC], and Content) to over- and underreporting using five analog samples. Two samples of 85 and 191 undergraduate students, respectively, took the MMPI-2 under underreporting versus…

This absolute scale contains nine times, each of which consists of a 100 millimeter vertical line with small division marks every 25 millimeters with the words "high" at the top and "low" at the bottom of the line. Above each of the vertical lines is a word or phrase. For the second grade scale these words are: arithmetic, counting, adding,…

This second grade scale contains ten items related to arithmetic and one item related to each of the following topics: reading, art, and playing. The third grade scale, which is not included, follows a similar format although the items do differ somewhat in content. Each question is followed by five boxes of succeedingly smaller size. The child…

Gleser and Lubin put forth a series of objections to Kalter, Marsden and Ericson's 1974 article on methods of controlling for response productivity. The latter contend that the Gleser and Lubin objections were either not to the point or biased on lack of attention and misunderstanding. (NG)

Content-parallel questionnaire items in which response schemes varied in one of two ways--scale alternatives were all defined or only endpoints were defined, and alternatives were numbered or lettered--were investigated on a large sample of college freshmen. (Author/JKS)

Recent evidence suggests that the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) is composed of two orthogonal factors, one representing traits such as dominance and low anxiety (PPI-I) and a second that reflects more socially deviant aspects of psychopathy (PPI-II). To assess whether response sets differentially affect these factors, the present…

A total of 1,247 college students participated in this study on the effect of scale format on the reliability of Likert-type rating scales. The number of response categories ranged from 3 to 9. Anchor labels on the scales were provided for each response option or for the end points only. The results indicated that the scales with few response…

The manner in which instructions to respondents influenced the psychometric results of an affective instrument was examined. Undergraduate students enrolled in an educational measurement course were randomly assigned to either immediate response or careful response treatments. A fifteen-item attitude scale was administered to both groups. The…

A Likert seven-choice response format for personality inventories allows finer distinctions by subjects than the traditional two-choice format. The Eysenck Personality Inventory was employed in the present study to test the hypothesis that use of the expanded format would result in a clearer and more accurate indication of test structure.…

Ninety-four college males completed a management trainees' selection test that had been developed by criterion-keying. They were instructed once to answer honestly, and once to answer as a highly motivated job applicant would. "Faking" instructions resulted in significantly higher scores. (Author/GDC)

Sociology students were administered two Thurstone-type attitude scales under two conditions (with or without a "cannot decide" option), and a measure of ambiguity tolerance. The "cannot decide" option was used by a slight majority of students when available, but usage was not related to ambiguity tolerance. (Author/JKS)

Two studies examined second- through fifth-grade children's negative-item bias with responses to the Self Description Questionnaire and how it is related to cognitive development and reading achievement. Results showed that younger children and poorer readers responded less appropriately to negative items, thus biasing the interpretations of their…

This ipsative scale is composed of triads of statements concerning school tasks. The tasks are: write a story, write the alphabet, read a story, paint a picture, add numbers, subtract numbers, and write the numbers from 1 to 20. The triples are composed with each of the three arithmetic tasks combined with all possible pairs of the four…

A comparison was made of responses to two types of personality inventory items, either sentence-type items or adjective-type items. Three methods of analysis were applied. It was concluded that the two item types give approximately equal results. (CTM)