Correlations between unbalanced personality scales were inflated by shared acquiescence set

Evidence

Having contraits on a test will not make people more motivated, although it probably slows down sloppy, automatic responding that continual protraits might spark. But it does let you use the invalid “agrees” from one half of the items to cancel out the invalid “agrees” from the other half, when the answers get summed. The same applies to invalid “disagrees.” You do have to balance scales, for uncontrolled yea-saying and naysaying can produce buckets of error variance. And all the while they will lead you to believe, through inflated alphas and puffed up empirical correlations with other unbalanced measures, that things are great. The road to Measurement Hell is paved with protrait items. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 820 (#expands, via linked claim)

The Zealot Scale, like my other 0-6 measures such as the Religious Emphasis Scale, does not control for response sets. So the interitem correlations and alphas on these scales are doubtless inflated, perhaps considerably. And their correlations with other unbalanced measures will also be pumped up. But their correlations with balanced measures such as the RWA, Religious Fundamentalism, and DOG Scales would be lessened, not increased. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4274 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Shared acquiescence can create spurious correlations between any two measures; Response acquiescence distorts psychological test scores undetected; Unbalanced scales inflate both alphas and empirical correlations. (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Unbalanced scales inflate reliability alphas and correlations through acquiescence #expands (0.95) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 820
• Unbalanced survey scales produce inflated internal correlations but deflated cross-measure correlations #complicates (0.82) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4274