Trig RESPQNSE VARIABILITY OF PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE_ITEMS: II

Item Content and Ambiguity Index

Abstract

One possible way to reduce the error associated with the meaenrement of personality, with inventories, is to construct moire stable items to use as initial pools for later, scale development. Soit, emth eresponse Variability of items has been studied.
It is important for these studies to classify the items in the several inventories. To classify theitems, we ve: administered 100 items taken from the elevhean ersonality ihventories to200 junior high school and calculated the correlations betwepenu pitlhse, esponsed to each, of 100 items: By factor analyzirng the matrix of the correlations by the centroid methad, we have extracted ten factors.
From the previous study, it is evident that. conventional measures of item variability (i. e., a the percentage of subjects changing their responses to item upon its repeated administration) is closelayn related to item endorsement frequency, and have limitations as indices of item.
So, w e have used Goldgerg'sm odel of Axnbiguity Index, as the imeasure of item instability, to integrate the response variability and item endorsement frequency.
From the responses? to each of 100 items above by junior high school pupils and college students, we have calculated the Ambiguity Index values. And it is ascertained that the Ambiguity Index is closely related to the response variability, but not related to, itern endorsement frequency.
From the results of factor analysis and the Ambiguity Index values, it is aassumed that theitems related to the inner aspects of personality such as emotinal instability, nervousness and introversion, show the higher Ambiguity Index values, This relationship seems to be one of the important problems of the measurement of personality with inventories.