Assessing personality through interviews

by Daniel Nguyen

This study investigates whether or not interviews are able to validly assess the personality domains of the Five Factor Model. Interview questions were designed to measure the broad personality domains of neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness of the Five Factor Model. Furthermore, self-report measures and interviews were compared in order to examine the susceptibility to faking behavior of each method. Participants participated in a mock interview either in an honest condition or an applicant condition. Multitrait-multimethod analysis provided some evidence of construct validity by demonstrating acceptable convergent and discriminate estimates. Interviews were found to be less susceptible to faking behavior for the personality traits of neuroticism, extroversion, and conscientiousness. The susceptibility of faking in agreeableness and openness was found to be not significantly different whether assessed with an interview or a pencil-and-paper measure. Furthermore, the impact of self-monitoring and impression management is discussed and the relationship was examined.

81 pages, ebook