An Evaluation of Item Selection Strategies in Personality Scale Construction

Abstract

THE area of personality assessment has experienced very substantial advances during the past decade, both in terms of its conceptual development, and in terms of its increased use of measurement techniques. Nowhere have these changes become more apparent than in the area of personality test development, where a modern 'methodology has replaced the simplistic conceptions of an earlier day. Ad hoc procedures, like empirical item selection against external criteria, have been found inadequate as a means for approaching the measurement of personality traits as constructs (Loevinger, 1957). Increasingly, there has developed an appreciation of the value of sequential strategies for item selection in personality assessment. Multiple strategies for item selection have been required by virtue of the simultaneous demands for item representativeness and scale generalizability, substantive cogency, homogeneity, and freedom from response biases, as well as for convergent and discriminant validity. One important purpose of the present investigation was to develop a large pool of items to measure the dimension of Evaluation Sensitivity, and to appraise the degree to which this item pool. would shorn adequate psychometric properties. The theoretical,