Assessing intercultural sensitivity: an empirical analysis of the Hammer and Bennett Intercultural Development Inventory

Abstract

This article reports the results of the authors’ psychometric analysis of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) (The intercultural development inventory manual. Intercultural Communication Institute, Portland, OR, 1998). The study had two major research objectives: to examine the empirical properties of the IDI and to generate a single, composite IDI score that could be used for research and training (participant profiling/diagnostic) purposes. In May, 1998 and January, 1999, the IDI was administered to 378 high school students, college students, and instructors in foreign language, language and culture, and intercultural education courses. IDI data from the final sample of 353 were analyzed using a standard set of psychometric procedures including factor analysis, reliability and validity testing, and social desirability analysis. The results demonstrate that the IDI is a reliable measure that has little or no social desirability bias and reasonably, although not exactly, approximates the developmental model of intercultural sensitivity (Towards ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In: R. M. Paige (Ed.), Cross-cultural orientation: New conceptualizations and applications, University Press of America, New York, 1986, pp. 27–69; Towards ethnorelativism: a developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In: R. M. Paige (Ed.), Education for the intercultural experience, Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, ME, 1993, pp. 21–71) upon which it is based. The study also produced a weighted mean composite measure, the IDI developmental score, which should be of particular value for profiling and diagnosis.