Forced-Choice Personality Measures and Academic Dishonesty: a Comparative Study

Extant research (e.g., Wilks et al. 2016; Williams et al. 2010) has shown personality to be a predictor of engagement in academic dishonesty. The current study seeks to determine whether the type of personality measure affects predictive efficacy by comparing single stimulus and forced-choice measures of personality using a sample of 278 undergraduate students in two U.S. universities. Students scoring high on conscientiousness reported as engaging in fewer academic cheating behaviors than those scoring low on conscientiousness regardless of whether conscientiousness was measured using the forced-choice or single stimulus scale format. In addition, the forced-choice and single stimulus measures each contributed significant unique variance to prediction of academic dishonesty. For agreeableness, scores on the single stimulus measure were negatively correlated with academic dishonesty whereas there was a positive relationship found for the forced-choice measure. Overall, the forced-choice format of the Occupational Personality Questionnaire 32r (OPQ32r) did not show higher validities than the single stimulus IPIP counterpart in predicting self-reported academic dishonesty. Implications for future research and management education are discussed.