| Individuals do not always respond to personality self-report inventories in a way that is accurate or reflective of their current state. Psychologists have developed scales to help determine the accuracy with which individuals respond to self-report inventories. Inconsistent responding, one particular response style, is often identified through the use of a True Response Inconsistency Scale (TRIN). This scale measures whether a person responds inconsistently to paired items that when answered in the same manner, contradict each other. Pinsoneault (1998) developed a TRIN for the Jesness Inventory (JI). The JI was revised in 2003 (JI-R). This dissertation examined the utility of the TRIN of the Jesness Inventory-Revised in measuring positive and negative response distortion. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups that received instruction on how to respond to the JI-R; standard, "faking good," and "faking bad" instructions." A one way analysis of variance showed a statistically significant difference between groups. A post-hoc analysis consisting of a Tukey's honest significant difference (HSD) found a statistically significant mean score difference between the faking bad group and the honest and faking good groups, but no statistically significant mean score difference between the faking good and normal instruction group. A discriminant analysis determined that the TRIN was able to correctly categorize 69.3% of protocols. The TRIN scale correctly classified 72% of the non-negative response instruction group, and correctly classified 64% of the negative response instruction group. The TRIN scale misclassified 28% of the non-negative response instruction group as the negative response instruction group (faking bad). The negative response instruction protocols were misidentified by the TRIN as non-negative response protocols 36% of the time. Overall, the TRIN showed some promise in assisting an examiner with identifying distorted responses on the JI-R. |
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