Spotting the Ideal Personality Response Effects of Item Matching in Forced Choice Measures for Personnel Selection

Forced choice (EC) personality questionnaires attempt to constrain job applicants from presenting idealized responses (or faking). FC questionnaires are designed by identifying itemsequally desirable in applicants, matching these into blocks, and instructing respondentsto rank the items most like themselves. Nonetheless, how closely items should be matched remains unclear, and desirability seems dependent on the job. We investigated howstrongly respondents (N= 436) agreed regardingthe ideal applicant response,whilevarying(a) howctoselyitemswere matched into blocks and (b) thejob context. While the most closely matched blocks elicited slight agreement on an ideal response, agreement increased noticeably with poorer matching. Nonetheless, differences in item desirability between different job conditions were evident even in closely matched blocks.

Automated summary

The study investigated the agreement among respondents regarding the ideal applicant response under different levels of item matching, revealing that higher agreement was observed with poorer matching. Additionally, differences in item desirability were evident across different job conditions even in closely matched blocks.