Abstract
Self-report personality tests widely used in clinical, medical, forensic, and organizational areas of psychological assessment are susceptible to faking. Several approaches have been developed to prevent or detect faking, which are based on the use of faking warnings, ipsative items, social desirability scales, and validity scales. The approach proposed in this work deals with the use of overt items (the construct is clear to test-takers) and covert items (the construct is obscure to test-takers). Covert items are expected to be more resistant to faking than overt items. Two hundred sixty-seven individuals were presented with an alexithymia scale. Two experimental conditions were considered. Respondents in the faking condition were asked to reproduce the profile of an alexithymic individual, whereas those in the sincere condition were not asked to exhibit a particular alexithymia profile. The items of the scale were categorized as overt or covert by expert psychotherapists and analyzed through Rasch models. Respondents in the faking condition were able to exhibit measures of alexithymia in the required direction. This occurred for both overt and covert items, but to a greater extent for overt items. Differently from overt items, covert items defined a latent variable whose meaning was shared between respondents in the sincere and faking condition, and resistant to deliberate distortion. Rasch fit statistics indicated unexpected responses more often for respondents in the faking condition than for those in the sincere condition and, in particular, for the responses to overt items by individuals in the faking condition. More than half of the respondents in the faking condition showed a drift rate (difference between the alexithymia levels estimated on the responses to overt and covert items) significantly larger than that observed in the respondents in the sincere condition.
Highlights
Self-report personality tests, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher et al, 1989), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975), the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV (MCMI-IV; Millon et al, 2015), and the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF; Cattell et al, 1970), are widely used in clinical, medical, Faking Overt and Covert Items forensic, and organizational areas of psychological assessment
The present study aims at investigating the influence of faking on overt and covert items, and the identifiability of possible fakers
Two separate rating scale model (RSM) analyses were conducted on respondents in the sincere and faking condition. These analyses provided us with two measures for each item, one estimated from the responses in the sincere condition and the other one estimated from the responses in the faking condition
Summary
Self-report personality tests, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher et al, 1989), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975), the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV (MCMI-IV; Millon et al, 2015), and the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF; Cattell et al, 1970), are widely used in clinical, medical, Faking Overt and Covert Items forensic, and organizational areas of psychological assessment (see, e.g., Domino and Domino, 2006; Rothstein and Goffin, 2006; Kaplan and Saccuzzo, 2009). There is not clear evidence that tests with ipsative items reduce faking (Fluckinger et al, 2008), whereas they could increase the cognitive loading of trait scores, with a detrimental effect on the validity of measures (Christiansen et al, 2005). Whenever test-takers have no idea about what the items are measuring, they cannot distort the responses in such a manner to present themselves in the desired way. From overt items, we expect the covert items to implement a latent variable whose meaning is resistant to deliberate distortion. We expect the fit statistics to reveal unexpected response behaviors more often for fakers than for sincere respondents This is expected to occur more often for overt items, which should be more susceptible to faking
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
