title: The Psychometric Costs of Applicants' Faking: Examining Measurement Invariance and Retest Correlations Across Response Conditions.
abstract: This study examines the stability of the response process and the rank-order of respondents responding to 3 personality scales in 4 different response conditions. Applicants to the University College of Teacher Education Styria (N = 243) completed personality scales as part of their college admission process. Half a year later, they retook the same personality scales in 1 of 3 randomly assigned experimental response conditions: honest, faking-good, or reproduce. Longitudinal means and covariance structure analyses showed that applicants' response processes could be partially reproduced after half a year, and respondents seemed to rely on an honest response behavior as a frame of reference. Additionally, applicants' faking behavior and instructed faking (faking-good) caused differences in the latent retest correlations and consistently affected measurement properties. The varying latent retest correlations indicated that faking can distort respondents' rank-order and thus the fairness of subsequent selection decisions, depending on the kind of faking behavior. Instructed faking (faking-good) even affected weak measurement invariance, whereas applicants' faking behavior did not. Consequently, correlations with personality scales-which can be utilized for predictive validity-may be readily interpreted for applicants. Faking behavior also introduced a uniform bias, implying that the classically observed mean raw score differences may not be readily interpreted.
authors.affiliation: a Institute of Practical Education and Practitioner Research , University College of Teacher Education Styria , Graz , Austria.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Krammer
authors.affiliation: b Psychological Methodology and Diagnostic, Department of Psychology , University of Graz , Austria.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sommer
authors.affiliation: b Psychological Methodology and Diagnostic, Department of Psychology , University of Graz , Austria.
authors.forename: Martin E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Arendasy
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D014495:Universities; D055815:Young Adult