Absence of Acquiescence in a Forced-Choice Test of Achievement Value

Abstract

Recent studies, a critical review of which is given in Messick (1967), have demonstrated that acquiescence response set-the tendency to agree with a statement irrespective of its content---operates in a number of personality scales. Many authors have argued that personaliry inventories such as the California F scale, the MMPI K Scale, the California Psychological Inventory, etc., reflect acquiescence. Another scale which might be suspected of acquiescence bias is the Sentence Completion Test (SCT), developed by Mukherjee (1964, 1965). In this scale three alternative answers are offered for each of 50 incomplete sentences. The respondent is required to select one of the given answers with which he agrees most and cross out another with which he agrees least. The present study was undertaken to determine how far the SCT scores are independent of the influence of acquiescence. The Agreement Response Scale (ARS) developed by Couch and Keniston (1960) was used for measuring acquiescence. The basic data were the n Ach scores and agreement response scores for 108 boys and girls enrolled in ninth grade in rwo schools situated in Toronto. Ss' ages ranged from 13 to 16 yr. Their socio-economic status, in general, could be called lower middle class. The product-moment correlation between n Ach and ARS scores was -.O8. The means for the SCT and ARS were 17.88 and 10.69 respectively. The unbiased variances for the above two tests were 25.40 and 6.13, respectively. The nonsignificant correlation indicates that the SO SCT triads, aimed at measuring achievement orientation, are subject to very little acquiescence bias. This is probably due to the specific and personal reference of the statements constituting each triad. The result supporn the finding of another study (Mukherjee, 1968) which demonstrated the absence of acquiescence in the SCT. It is, however, possible that certain unknown variables might be so interacting that the manifestation of response acquiescence in the SCT is minimized. The identification of such moderator variables certainly calls for intensive research.