Personality measures with items that ask respondents to characterize themselves across a range of situations are increasingly used for personnel selection purposes. Research conducted in a laboratory setting has found that personality items may have different psychometric characteristics depending on the degree to which that range is widened or narrowed (i.e., degree of contextualization). This study is an attempt to study the psychometric impact of contextualization in a large field sample (N = 1,078). Respondents were given either a contextualized (at work) or noncontextualized (in general) version of the six facets of the conscientiousness factor of the NEO PI-R. Analyses were conducted at the facet and item levels. Results were mixed but indicated that error variances tended to be slightly lower for the work-specific instrument in comparison to the noncontextualized instrument. Implications for personality inventory development, validation, and use are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The big-five personality dimensions and job performance. Personnel Psychology, 44, 1-26.
2.
Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1996). Effects of impression management and self-deception on the predictive validity of personality constructs. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 261-272.
3.
Bem, D. J., & Allen, A. (1974). On predicting some of the people some of the time: The search for cross-situational consistencies in behavior. Psychological Review, 81, 506-520.
4.
Bem, D. J., & Funder, D. C. (1978). Predicting more of the people more of the time: Assessing the personality of situations. Psychological Review, 85, 485-501.
5.
Bentler, P. M. (1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238-246.
6.
Bentler, P. M., & Bonett, D. G. (1980). Significance tests and goodness of fit in the analysis of covariance structures. Psychological Bulletin, 88, 588-606.
7.
Bollen, K. A. (1989). Structural equations with latent variables. New York: John Wiley.
8.
Born, M. P. (1994). Development of a situation-response inventory for managerial selection. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2, 45-52.
9.
Browne, M. W., & Cudeck, R. (1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In K. A. Bollen & J. S. Long (Eds.), Testing structural equation models (pp. 136-162). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
10.
Cheung, G. W., & Rensvold, R. B. (1999). Testing factorial invariance across groups: A reconceptualization and proposed new method. Journal of Management, 25, 1-27.
11.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1980). Still stable after all these years: Personality as a key to some issues in adulthood and old age. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim, Jr. (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 65-102). New York: Academic Press.
12.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO PI-R professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
13.
Douglas, E. F., McDaniel, M. A., & Snell, A. F. (1996). The validity of non-cognitive measures decays when applicants fake. In J. B. Keyes & L. N. Dosier (Eds.), Proceedings of the Academy of Management (pp. 127-131). Madison, WI: Omnipress.
14.
Drasgow, F., & Kanfer, R. (1985). Equivalence of psychological measurement in heterogeneous populations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 662-680.
15.
Gorsuch, R. L. (1983). Factor analysis (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
16.
Hampson, S. E., Goldberg, L. R., & John, O. P. (1987). Category-breadth and social desirability values for 573 personality terms. European Journal of Personality, 1, 241-258.
17.
Hogan, R. T. (1991). Personality and personality measurement. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 873-919). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
18.
Hogan, R. T., & Hogan, J. (1995). Hogan Personality Inventory manual (2nd ed.). Tulsa, OK: Hogan Assessment Systems.
19.
Hough, L. M. (1998). Effects of intentional distortion in personality measurement and evaluation of suggested palliatives. Human Performance, 11, 209-244.
20.
Hough, L. M., Eaton, N. K., Dunnette, M. D., Kamp, J. D., & McCloy, R. A. (1990). Criterion-related validities of personality constructs and the effect of response distortion on those validities. Journal of Applied Psychology Monographs, 75, 581-595.
21.
Hu, L., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1-55.
22.
Hunter, J. E., & Hunter, R. F. (1984). Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bulletin, 96, 73-98.
23.
Jöreskog, K. G. (1971a). Simultaneous factor analysis in several populations. Psychometrika, 36, 409-426.
24.
Jöreskog, K. G. (1971b). Statistical analysis of sets of congeneric tests. Psychometrika, 36, 109-133.
25.
Jöreskog, K. G., & Sörbom, D. (1996). LISREL 8: User’s reference guide. Chicago: Scientific Software International.
26.
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102, 246-268.
27.
Moskowitz, D. S. (1994). Cross-situational generality and the interpersonal circumplex. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 921-933.
28.
Mount, M. K., & Barrick, M. R. (1995). Manual for the Personal Characteristics Inventory. Iowa City, IA: Authors.
29.
Mulaik, S. (1972). Foundations of factor analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill.
30.
Murtha, T. C., Kanfer, R., & Ackerman, P. L. (1996). Toward an interactionist taxonomy of persons and situations: An integrative situational-dispositional representation of personality traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 193-207.
31.
Paunonen, S. V. (1998). Hierarchical organization of personality and prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 538-556.
32.
Pervin, L. A. (Ed.). (1989). Handbook of personality theory and research. New York: Guilford.
33.
Raymark, P. H., Schmit, M. J., & Guion, R. M. (1997). Identifying potentially useful personality constructs for personnel selection. Personnel Psychology, 50, 723-736.
34.
Roberts, B. W., & Donahue, E. M. (1994). One personality, multiple selves: Integrating personality and social roles. Journal of Personality, 62, 199-218.
35.
Robie, C., Born, M. P., & Schmit, M. J. (in press). Personal and situational determinants of personality responses: A partial reanalysis and reinterpretation of the Schmit et al. (1995) data. Journal of Business and Psychology.
36.
Schmit, M. J., Kihm, J. A., & Robie, C. (2000). Development of a global measure of personality. Personnel Psychology, 53, 153-193.
37.
Schmit, M. J., & Ryan, A. M. (1993). The Big Five in personnel selection: Factor structure in applicant and nonapplicant populations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 966-974.
38.
Schmit, M. J., Ryan, A. M., Stierwalt, S. L., & Powell, A. B. (1995). Frame-of-reference effects on personality scale scores and criterion-related validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 607-620.
39.
Schneider, R. J., Hough, L. M., & Dunnette, M. D. (1996). Broadsided by broad traits: How to sink science in five dimensions or less. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17, 639-655.
40.
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Wright, J. C. (1989). Intuitive interactionism in person perception: Effects of situation-behavior relations on dispositional judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 41-53.
41.
Shoda, Y., Mischel, W., & Wright, J. C. (1993). The role of situational demands and cognitive competencies in behavior organization and personality coherence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1023-1035.
42.
Tett, R., Jackson, D., & Rothstein, M. (1991). Personality measures as predictors of job performance: A meta-analytic review. Personnel Psychology, 44, 703-742.
43.
Vandenberg, R. J., & Lance, C. E. (2000). A review and synthesis of the measurement invariance literature: Suggestions, practices, and recommendations for organizational research. Organizational Research Methods, 3, 4-69.
44.
Wright, J. C., & Mischel, W. (1987). A conditional approach to dispositional constructs: The local predictability of social behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1159-1177.
