Self-evaluative questionnaires as projective measures of personality.

The Impact of Item Characteristics on Item and Scale Validity

“…Item ambiguity, measured by all indices, showed small but consistent positive correlations with item validity across the five factors. This contradicts the constative view and replicates the findings of Elias (1951), Gordon (1953), Isard (1956), andJohnson (1988), all of whom reported a positive relation between item ambiguity and validity. However, rated item ambiguity in the current study entered only one regression equation (for Sociality), and its weight was negative.…”

“…From a performative perspective, ambiguous items may sometimes be more valid than unambiguous items, because the manner in which a person interprets an ambiguous item is itself a valid indicator of personality (Elias, 1951). For example, neurotic and nonneurotic people who experience exactly the same number of headaches will interpret and endorse the ambiguous item "I often get headaches" differently.…”

Objective Tests as Instruments of Psychological Theory

“…Meehl (85) observed that while ambiguity in wording and inaccuracy of memory are sources of error in the traditional view of selfratings, for the MMPI they may be sources of discrimination. Elias (27) found evidence that ambiguously worded items served projective purposes better than explicitly worded ones. Dorris, Levinson, and Hanfmann (22) found some evidence that third person items are better measures of defended against or unrecognized personality tendencies than first person items.…”

Ambiguity and discriminating power in personality inventories.

“…This cancelling effect is based on an assumption that the interpretive choices are randomly distributed among the groups being discriminated. Elias (1951) goes even further and takes the point of view that interpretive ambiguity is useful and needed for maximal discrimination. His point of view is that the different individual interpretations of inventory statements may themselves reflect relevant personality differences and are thus sources of potentially discriminating variance.…”

“…Research and test construction procedures designed to improve personality inventories can be most fruitful if they are guided by a clear understanding of the rationale of personality inventories. However, disagreements concerning the beneficial or deleterious influence of personality inventory item ambiguity (Allport, 1937;Anastasi, 19S4;Benton, 1935;Eisenberg, 1941;Elias, 1951;Freeman, 1955;Hutt, 1945;Landis & Katz, 1934;Meehl, 1945;Rotter, 1954;Vernon, 1953) indicate that, at least with regard to item ambiguity, this clarification of rationale has not been fully achieved. This paper is an attempt to arrive at some further clarification of personality inventory rationale through a discussion of item ambiguity and its relationships to discriminating power.…”