A further note on the fakability of the MTAI.

Abstract

The problem of getting honest, objective, and straightforward answers to personality and interest inventories has been of concern to test users for some time. A related problem and the concern of this paper, is how to find out whether or not a particular inventory, in this case the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory, can be falsified. There are at least five published studies (1,2,4,5,6) of the fakability of the MTAI. Each of the investigators had Ms subjects complete the inventory twice under differing conditions. However each used somewhat different instructions and report somewhat different findings. Since it appeared that some of the discrepancies in findings might be due to the fact that each investigator was concerned with the effect of different conditions of administration, it was decided to conduct a study which incorporated all these conditions in a factorial design. The report which follows will present the findings of that study and compare them with those of earlier studies. It will also discuss some of the implications of the findings for fakability studies in general. Review of Three Representative StudiesCallis (1), one of the authors of the MTAI, worked with three groups of college students. The students in one group first completed the inventory under standard directions. Four to six weeks later they repeated the inventory under directions to "fake good," i.e., to make as high a score as possible by answering the items the way they thought a good teacher would. In a second group the students were asked to "fake good" on the first administration of the inventory. A week to 10 days later they repeated the inventory under standard directions. A third group, the control, was also tested twice, a week to 10 days iThis study was supported in part by the Fund for Occupational Research of the School of Education, UCLA.

Conditions Affecting the Fakability of Teacher-Selection Inventories

“…The question of interest to the users of selection inventories is, &dquo;Will the selectees fake this inventory?&dquo; Laboratory studies cannot answer this question. One approach to this problem was tried by Sorenson and Sheldon (11). In this study two comparable groups of prospective teachers took the MTAI, one group responding anonymously, as part of a class exercise, and the other responding to the inventory as part of the selection process for being admitted to the School of Education at U.C.L.A.…”

IS THE MINNESOTA TEACHER ATTITUDE INVENTORY VALID AND HOMOGENEOUS?1

“…Others, such as Rabinowitz (1954), Scott and Brinkley (1960), Sheldon (1959), and Sorenson (1956), have questioned the MTAI's susceptibility to faking.…”