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The validity of ipsative and quasi‐ipsative forced‐choice personality inventories for different occupational groups: A comprehensive meta‐analysis
Author(s) -
Salgado Jesús F.,
Anderson Neil,
Tauriz Gabriel
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of occupational and organizational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.257
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 2044-8325
pISSN - 0963-1798
DOI - 10.1111/joop.12098
Subject(s) - psychology , personality , normative , incremental validity , predictive validity , personnel selection , criterion validity , psychometrics , personality assessment inventory , personality test , test validity , social psychology , construct validity , developmental psychology , statistics , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology
A comprehensive meta‐analysis of two types of forced‐choice ( FC ) personality inventories (ipsative and quasi‐ipsative) across nine occupational groups (Clerical, Customer Service, Health Care, Managerial, Military, Police, Sales, Skilled Manual, and Supervisory) is reported. Quasi‐ipsative measures showed substantially higher operational validity coefficients and validity generalization across all occupations than ipsative measures. Results also showed that, compared with the findings of previous meta‐analyses, quasi‐ipsative personality inventories are better predictors of job performance than previously thought and that operational validities for ipsative measures are notably congruent with past findings. We conclude that quasi‐ipsative scale formats are superior for predicting job performance for all occupational groups. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for personnel selection are discussed in [Section 22. Conclusion]. Practitioner points Personality inventories have been widely used in personnel selection, but it was thought that their predictive validity was small. We found that they are substantially more valid than was previously thought. The traditional opinion among researchers in I/O psychology is that single‐stimulus personality inventories (e.g., normative Likert‐type scales) have superior predictive validity to FC personality questionnaires (e.g., ipsative inventories), but our research findings suggest that this is not true for quasi‐ipsative inventories. In comparison with ipsative and normative personality inventories, quasi‐ipsative personality inventories showed higher predictive validity regardless of occupational group. Based on our results, we recommend the use of quasi‐ipsative FC personality measures in personnel selection decisions regardless of the occupation group being recruited for.