Integrity Testing

Paper-and-pencil tests designed to measure integrity, honesty, dependability, and related constructs have been in existence since at least the 1950s and have long been used in the retail sales, banking, and food service industries. Following the 1988 Employee Polygraph Protection Act, a federal law that restricted the use of the polygraph (i.e., the so-called lie detector), integrity testing grew substantially and spread into a wider range of industries and applications.

Although the individual tests differ in a number of specifics, there are a number of features common to virtually all integrity tests. In particular, integrity tests usually include items that refer to one or more of the following areas: (a) direct admissions of illegal or questionable activities, (b) opinions regarding illegal or questionable behavior, (c) general ...