Integrity Testing and Deviance: Construct Validity Issues and the Role of Situational Factors

Two studies were conducted to investigate relationships among several types of preemployment integrity tests and situational factors which could play a role in employee deviance. In one study, three integrity measures were administered to subjects who were told to assume the role of job applicant for a position in either a large, small, or unspecified organization. Moral development stage, social desirability, and demographic data were collected. While there was some construct consistency across the different integrity measures, the expected relation between honesty and moral development was not found. There was also no difference in integrity test scores as a function of the organizational size manipulation. In a second laboratory study in which subjects were asked to play the role of job incumbents, both size and perceived equity of organizational climate were experimentally manipulated. The dependent measure was a scale of likelihood of engaging in organizationally proscribed behaviors. While again no effect was found for organizational size, those individuals who perceived themselves as employed in an organization in which employees are mistreated tended to report greater likelihood of engaging in organizational deviance. Implications for integrity testing in personnel selection are discussed.