How response biases affect the factor structure of Big Five personality questionnaires

Abstract

Título: Cómo afectan los sesgos de respuesta a la estructura factorial de los tests basados en el modelo de los Cinco Grandes factores de personalidad. Resumen: Diversos estudios muestran que los tests de personalidad pueden verse afectados por los sesgos de respuesta, lo que puede tener consecuencias en su estructura factorial, especialmente en muestras con bajo nivel educativo o adolescentes. El objetivo del presente estudio consiste en determinar cuál es el efecto de la deseabilidad social y la aquiescencia en la estructura factorial de tres cuestionarios basados en el modelo de los Cinco Grandes factores de personalidad: Big Five Inventory, Five Factor Personality Inventory y Overall Personality Assessment Scale. Los datos se analizaron a partir de un nuevo método que elimina los efectos de la deseabilidad social y la aquiescencia de la matriz de correlaciones inter-item utilizada en el análisis factorial. La muestra está compuesta por 392 estudiantes universitarios, por lo que no incluye individuos con bajo nivel educativo, niños o adolescentes. Los resultados indican que, incluso en muestras sin individuos con bajo nivel educativo, controlar la deseabilidad social y la aquiescencia da lugar a una estructura factorial más simple y congruente con la solución teórica esperada a partir del modelo de los Cinco Grandes. Además, los resultados sugieren que en los tests basados en este modelo, este efecto puede ser debido especialmente a la aquiescencia. Palabras clave: Modelo de los Cinco Grandes; personalidad; deseabilidad social; aquiescencia; sesgos de respuesta. Abstract:Several studies have shown that personality self-reports may be affected by response biases, and that this may have consequences on their factor structure, especially in samples with little education or in adolescents. The current study aims to understand the effect of social desirability and acquiescence on the factor structure of three questionnaires based on the Five Factor Model of personality: the Big Five Inventory, the Five Factor Personality Inventory and the Overall Personality Assessment Scale. The data was analysed using a new method that removes the effects of both social desirability and acquiescence from the inter-item correlation matrix used for factor analysis. These effects were assessed in a sample of 392 university students, which contained no individuals with low educational levels, children or adolescents. The results showed that, even in samples with no individuals with low educational levels, controlling for social desirability and acquiescence led to a simpler factor structure that is more congruent with the theoretical solution expected from the five factor model. It also seems that in the domain of inventories based upon the five factor model, this effect may be specially due to acquiescence.

The INventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Antisocial Behavior (INCA) for Young People: Development and Validation in a Community Sample

“…As we mentioned in the introduction, this kind of scale is often affected by SD, and the loadings of some items on SD justified controlling this bias. On the other hand, several studies have shown that controlling AC makes the factor structure simpler and more congruent (Rammstedt and Farmer, 2013; Navarro-González et al, 2016; Morales-Vives et al, 2017), which is the case of INCA. In addition, since these results were obtained when the test was administered anonymously, we assume that when the test is not anonymous, such as in forensics (penitentiary centers, social services, etc.…”

“…For this reason, like other personality traits such as aggressiveness, the items that assess this construct are expected to be deeply impacted by social desirability (SD) (Rogers et al, 2002; Vigil-Colet et al, 2012). Several studies show that controlling acquiescence (AC) in personality questionnaires provides a simpler and more congruent factor structure (Rammstedt and Farmer, 2013; Navarro-González et al, 2016; Morales-Vives et al, 2017). Therefore, response bias control is highly recommended for assessing these kinds of construct, although the ICU test does not control any response bias.…”

INCA-M: Mexican Adaptation of the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Antisocial Behavior

“…Moreover, the INCA questionnaire has the advantage that it controls the response biases social desirability and acquiescence, unlike other questionnaires that assess CU traits such as the ICU or the Mexican adaptation ICU-13. It should be taken into account that some characteristic features of psychopathy are considered to be socially undesirable and that the fact of controlling social desirability and acquiescence in personality questionnaires provides a more congruent and simpler factor structure (Rammstedt and Farmer, 2013;Navarro-González et al, 2016;Morales-Vives et al, 2017). For this reason, it is important to have instruments that provide participant scores that are free of these response biases.…”

“…Some characteristic features of psychopathy, such as the manipulation of other people for personal gain, are considered socially undesirable, and for this reason, SD is controlled in the INCA questionnaire. Moreover, the fact of that these response biases are controlled in personality questionnaires provides a more congruent and simpler factor structure (Rammstedt and Farmer, 2013;Navarro-González et al, 2016;Morales-Vives et al, 2017). These studies have controlled these biases by applying the procedure developed by Ferrando et al (2009) and Lorenzo-Seva and Ferrando (2009).…”

Controlling for Response Biases in Self-Report Scales: Forced-Choice vs. Psychometric Modeling of Likert Items

“…For modeling SDR an independent set of SDR marker items is required. This approach has been successfully applied, and repeatedly found that in the psychometric analyses of personality self-reports, when biases are removed, the expected factorial structure is recovered better (e.g., Navarro-González et al, 2016; Morales-Vives et al, 2017).…”