What Do Integrity Tests Measure?

Theft, sabotage, not showing up to work on time, gossiping, intentionally working slowly – no employer wants to hire someone who will engage in these counterproductive work behaviors. To help avoid hiring bad employees, psychological assessments, including integrity tests, are often given to applicants.

“Integrity tests are one of the most common psychological predictors of counterproductive work behaviors used in personnel selection,” said Dr. Chris Berry, an assistant psychology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Specifically, this type of test is mostly used for entry-level positions.

Integrity tests differ somewhat from personality assessments, which are typically designed to coherently measure a specific psychological trait, such as conscientiousness or agreeableness. Integrity tests vary because they are specifically designed to predict a criterion of interest, such as counterproductive work behaviors, with less regard for the specific psychological traits that are being measured. Thus, integrity tests reflect a combination of psychological constructs that exhibit relationships with the criterion of interest.

Integrity tests have been around for a long time, and Berry recently undertook a review of the new developments in integrity test research. His co-researchers were Dr. Paul Sackett, a University of Minnesota professor who has been involved with integrity test research throughout his career, and doctoral student Shelly Wiemann.

Their study identified several trends in integrity test research, especially in determining the different characteristics they measure.

For example, past research has shown that integrity tests correlate with three of the “Big 5” personality trait dimensions: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. The Big 5 represents a broad taxonomy of personality traits that are commonly accepted by researchers. But new research examining integrity tests at the item-level, while still confirming the relationship to the three traits, also suggests a connection with the other two aspects of the Big 5 personality traits: Extraversion and Openness.

Furthermore, Berry said new research is starting to look beyond the Big 5. “I see the main question right now as what do integrity tests measure other than the Big 5 traits,” he said.

Berry points to some interesting research currently underway. For example, he cited studies that are examining multiple integrity tests at the item level, pulling together findings from the various tests and placing them in coherent groups to measure certain characteristics. This in turn can reveal more useful information about what integrity tests actually measure.

Although questions still linger about what exactly is measured, one thing is certain – integrity tests do have benefits, Berry said. They are able to predict a wide range of job behaviors, and they can be a helpful indicator of job performance. Plus, they are inexpensive, easy to administer, and the test scores show no subgroup differences, such as race, gender, or age.

Integrity tests also exhibit incremental validity, offering more to prediction of job performance than other personality tests. For example, cognitive ability tests are one of the best indicators of performance, but adding an integrity assessment to a selection system already containing a cognitive ability test can tell even more about a prospective employee, according to Berry.

“What we find is integrity tests can tell us more beyond cognitive ability tests in terms of predicting a person’s performance on a job than just about any measure we’ve come up with in I–O psychology,” Berry said.

There are two categories of integrity tests: overt and personality oriented. An overt style features straight-forward, “in-your-face” questions. They measure the propensity to engage in a variety of counterproductive work behaviors, but they are mainly geared toward gauging attitudes regarding theft or admittance to theft.

The personality oriented style is more similar to a typical personality test, assessing a mixture of characteristics, such as the degree of reliability, dependability, impulsiveness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability.

These tests have typically been administered as a paper and pencil or computerized evaluation, but research shows that new formats are starting to emerge, including interviews, voice responses, and more computer-adaptive methods.

One major concern associated with testing is that responses are susceptible to being faked. Although, it is unknown how many applicants really do fake. Researchers differ on whether faking affects the overall validity of tests. Berry, however, is confident in integrity tests’ ability to predict counterproductive work behavior. He said, “Whether people are faking these or not, the tests still seem to predict whether the applicants will engage in counterproductive work behaviors and perform well on the job.”