A Comparison of Methodology on the Fakability of the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory

Abstract

THE BASIC question of the fakability of the I MTAI is centered around the assertion of Callis (1), one of the authors of the MTAI that the MTAI is only slightly susceptible to attempts to fake good, and the assertion of Rabinowitz (5) that it is highly susceptible to faking if the sub ject has some knowledge of the viewpoint en dorsed by the selection agency. The basic differ ence of opinion between Callis and Rabinowitz revolves around the difference in approach both authors used. In the faking situation, Callis in structed his subjects to attempt to make as high a score as possible and to answer the items as they thought an excellent teacher would. Rabinowitz, however, took exception to the Callis experimen tal instructions in that: Asking the subject to take the MTAI under instructions to secure as high a score as possible provides him with an ex plicit set which does not differ greatly from the set which, under standard instructions, he pro vides for himself. An adequate procedure would employ a faking situation in which the subject's set differs markedly from his set in the control situation. Therefore, Rabinowitz provided his subjects with faking instructions which defined the qualities of a permissive and authoritarian teacher. Stein and Hardy (9) and Sorensen and Sheldon (8) found in their studies that their sub jects could not fake the test good without an explicit set being provided for them. Coleman (2), Sorenson (7), Stein and Hardy (9), Shel don (6), and Polmantier and Ferguson (4) found the test could be faked good when a responding j set was provided for the subjects. The authors of this study felt that an approach which would in volve additional aspects of the Callis and Rabino witz studies might lend further enlightenment to the matter of fakability in relation to the MTAI. The Rabinowitz faking instructions were faithfully replicated in this study, but the Callis instructions were changed in part and will be explained later. The MTAI was administered to 272 subjects. Seventy-seven of these were freshmen who had taken no courses in psychology or education. Ninety-three were second semester juniors who were primarily majors in psychology or educa tion. One hundred and two were experienced pub lic school teachers taking graduate courses at St. Lawrence University. Each of these class groups was divided into four experimental subgroups. Each of these four experimental subgroups was subjected to one of the following experimental situations :