Abstract
Abstract. During very long self-rating sessions there is a risk that respondents will be tired and/or lose interest. Is this a concern for users of long personality inventories, such that the reliability becomes threatened in the latter half when respondents have made hundreds of personality self-ratings? Two thousand three hundred fifty-two volunteers completed long (≈ 500 items) personality inventories on the Internet, where items were presented in a unique random order for each participant. Perhaps counterintuitively, there was no evidence that reliability is threatened as respondents approach the end of a long personality inventory. If anything, the ratings in the second half of the inventories had higher reliability than ratings in the first half. Ratings were quicker towards the end of the inventories, but equally reliable. The criterion validity, estimated using Paunonen’s Behavior Report Form, was maintained too. The current results provide little reason to mistrust responses to items that appear towards the end of long personality inventories.
References
2009). Five-factor inventories have a major general factor related to social desirability which can be reduced by framing items neutrally. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 335–344. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.013
(2014). Criterion validity is maintained when items are evaluatively neutralized: Evidence from a full‐scale five‐factor model inventory. European Journal of Personality, 28, 620–633. doi: 10.1002/per.1960
(1955). Rater reliability and “judgmental fatigue”. Journal of Applied Psychology, 39, 451–454. doi: 10.1037/h0046015
(1992). MMPI-2 random responding indices: Validation using a self-report methodology. Psychological Assessment, 4, 340–345. doi: 10.1037/1040-3590.4.3.340
(1984). Approaches to personality inventory construction: A comparison of merits. American Psychologist, 39, 214–227. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.39.3.214
(1992). Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO five-factor inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
(2012). An evaluation of the consequences of using short measures of the Big Five personality traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 874–888. doi: 10.1037/a0027403
(2009). Effects of questionnaire length on participation and indicators of response quality in a Web survey. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, 349–360. doi: 10.1093/poq/nfp031
(1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The Big Five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1216–1229. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.59.6.1216
(1992). Integration of the Big Five and circumplex approaches to trait structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 146–163. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.63.1.146
(2005). Ascertaining the validity of individual protocols from Web-based personality inventories. Journal of Research in Personality, 39, 103–129. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2004.09.009
(1988). Item context effects on personality scales: Measuring changes the measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 312–320. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.55.2.312
(2001). Semantic response consistency and protocol validity in structured personality assessment: The case of the NEO-PI-R. Journal of Personality Assessment, 76, 315–332. doi: 10.1207/S15327752JPA7602_12
(1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 81–90. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.52.1.81
(1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
(2003). Big five factors of personality and replicated predictions of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 411–422. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.411
(2015). psych: Procedures for personality and psychological research. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=psych Version=1.5.1
(2009). Coefficients alpha, beta, omega, and the glb: Comments on Sijtsma. Psychometrica, 74, 145–154. doi: 10.1007/S11336-008-9102-Z
(2001). Measuring global self-esteem: Construct validation of a single-item measure and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 151–161. doi: 10.1177/0146167201272002
(2011). Response burden and questionnaire length: Is shorter better? A review and meta-analysis. Value in Health, 14, 1101–1108. doi: 10.1016/j.jval.2011.06.003
(