Integrity Testing

Overt versus Personality-Based Tests

A distinction is usually drawn between tests that inquire directly about integrity, asking for admissions of past theft, or asking about the degree to which the examinee approves of dishonest behaviors (often labeled overt tests), and tests that indirectly infer integrity on the basis of responses to questions that are not obviously integrity-related (often labeled personality-based tests. However, the distinction between overt and personality-based tests is not always a simple one. Many overt tests include items, scales, and so forth that are not obviously related to honesty, and many personality-based tests contain items that might alert the respondent to the true purpose of the test.

Overt tests usually include direct or indirect measures of perceptions of norms relating to honesty. The rationale for this type of measure is that individuals who believe dishonesty, theft, and so on are common and widely accepted are more likely to engage in these behaviors themselves. Even questions that ask for admissions of wrongdoing are probably best understood as measures of perceived norms. Individuals who admit to theft, dishonesty, and rule breaking when responding to an integrity test often believe that the behaviors they are admitting to are in fact widespread and at least implicitly accepted.

Personality-based tests often measure constructs such as thrill seeking, socialization, and resistance to authority. More recent tests have incorporated broad dimensions of personality that have been empirically linked to theft and counterproductive behavior, notably conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional stability.

Integrity tests (both overt and personality-based) appear to measure a range of constructs, and there is disagreement over the assumption that a general honesty or integrity factor underlies these tests. Various tests use unique scoring systems, and it is unwise to assume that tests are interchangeable.

Validity of Integrity Tests

Early reviews of integrity test validity came to discouraging conclusions, but since the late 1980s, both narrative reviews and meta-analyses of integrity test validity have suggested that integrity tests are useful for a variety of purposes.

In discussing validity evidence, it is important to identify the specific criteria used in different studies. Some studies have validated integrity tests against measures of counterproductive behavior, whereas others have validated these tests against measures of general job performance. For example, scores on integrity tests show average correlations of .21 and .33 with measures of job performance and counterproductivity, respectively (correcting for unreliability and a variety of statistical artifacts, the estimated population correlations are .34 and .47, respectively). These two criteria are clearly not independent; employees who engage in a wide variety of counterproductive behavior are unlikely to be good performers. Nevertheless, there are important differences between the two criteria and, more important, differences in the criterion-related validity of integrity tests for predicting the two.

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