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Adjectives vs. Statements in Forced Choice and Likert Item Types: Which Is More Resistant to Impression Management in
Kate E Walton1, Justine Radunzel1, Raeal Moore1
1ACT, Inc, Iowa City, IA, USA.
Journal of Personality Assessment
|February 3, 2021
Summary
Individuals can intentionally manage impressions on personality tests, with Likert-scale statements being easiest to manipulate. Cognitive ability influences impression management effectiveness, particularly for academic outcomes like ACT scores.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Personality Assessment
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Impression management is a key consideration in personality assessment.
- Understanding how response formats affect impression management is crucial for test validity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the effectiveness of impression management across different response formats for personality measures.
- To investigate the influence of item type (adjective vs. statement) and response scale (Likert vs. forced choice) on intentional response manipulation.
Main Methods:
- 1,798 high school students were randomly assigned to either standard or impression management instructions.
- Participants responded to Five-Factor Model personality measures under varying item types and response conditions.
- Scores and validity estimates were compared between groups and conditions.
Main Results:
- Impression management was observed across all item types, but was most pronounced with Likert-scale statements.
- Response format significantly impacted the ease of response manipulation, with Likert items and statements being more susceptible.
- Item type had minimal impact on convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity, except for ACT scores.
Conclusions:
- Response format influences the degree of impression management achievable.
- Cognitive ability, as indicated by ACT scores, plays a role in an individual's capacity for impression management.
- Findings have implications for designing personality assessments that are more resistant to response manipulation.
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