Development of an Inconsistent Responding Scale for the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised.

Area of Science:

• Psychometrics
• Personality Psychology
• Quantitative Psychology

Background:

• Careless responding poses a significant threat to the validity of self-reported personality data.
• Existing methods for detecting inconsistent responding may not be sufficiently robust for widely used personality measures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a new scale, the Brief Response Inconsistency Evaluation (BRIE) for the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO PI-R).
• To assess the BRIE's effectiveness in differentiating genuine from random responses and its correlation with other measures of response styles.

Main Methods:

• Utilized archival samples of undergraduate and community participants.
• Developed the BRIE by identifying correlated item pairs present in both 60- and 100-item HEXACO PI-R versions.
• Calculated inconsistent responding scores by summing absolute differences between item pairs.

Main Results:

• The BRIE effectively distinguished between genuine and randomly generated responses across different samples.
• BRIE scores showed expected correlations with other careless responding measures and relevant personality traits, such as conscientiousness.
• Tentative cut scores for the BRIE were explored to balance sensitivity and specificity.

Conclusions:

• The Brief Response Inconsistency Evaluation (BRIE) is a promising tool for detecting inconsistent responding in HEXACO PI-R data.
• The BRIE enhances the validity of personality assessments by identifying potentially unreliable self-reports.
• Further research is recommended to validate the BRIE across diverse populations and translations, and to refine cut scores.