Integrity Testing: A Projective Inventory Approach

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a projective inventory to measure integrity. The projective inventory (PI) is a 69 item (statements) scale consists of 6 situations designed to measure integrity. Integrity has six dimensions: a) Belief in higher order principles: truth, (b) Money as means not as end, (c) Moral courage: indifference to suffering, (d) Commitment to family and friends, (e) Involvement in corruption and (f) Favoritism. The projective inventory yields a total score and six scores corresponding to the dimensions of integrity. Each score was calculated according to agreement and disagreement to the statements given by the participants during the data collection. The results revealed that the average score on positive dimensions of integrity (moral courage: Indifference to suffering, truth & commitment respectively) were higher than the negative values traits of integrity (involvement in corruption & favoritism). Reliability of the projective inventory integrity is 0.94. The construct (convergent) validity of the test was examined in which the correlation of PI scores with Big Five personality attributes was found to be moderate, which indicates that PI measures something related to existing tools of integrity in slightly different manner. Factor analysis was carried out to find the factor structure of the scale. Factor analysis revealed three factors in terms of indifference to suffering commitment and truth. Taking all the dimensions of integrity together and analyzing the step-wise regression analysis, it was found that indifference to suffering is the best predictor of overall test followed by favoritism, commitment, corruption and truth.