Applicant Review

Abstract

The Applicant Review (AR) is a 102-item self-report psychological instrument designed primarily for use as a pre-employment screening device. Developed by Cherrington and Cherrington in 1983, the scale comprehensively assesses an individual’s propensity for workplace deviance by measuring two core psychological constructs: honesty and aggressive tendencies. The scale has undergone multiple revisions (1985, 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1996) to maintain relevance and effectiveness in personnel selection. A detailed technical manual and computer scoring options are available to support its professional application.

The Applicant Review is structured into multiple parts covering social attitudes, personal behaviors, past behaviors, and future intentions related to ethical conduct. Its development and validation involved a large, diverse sample of over 33,330 participants across various organizations in the United States.

Keywords

Honesty test, integrity scale, pre-employment screening, personnel selection, aggressive tendencies, workplace deviance, construct validity, reliability, organizational psychology.

Authors

Cherrington, D. J., Cherrington, J. O.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Applicant Review (AR) scale is to serve as a standardized, objective measure for pre-employment screening. It is designed to help employers predict counterproductive work behaviors, such as theft, fraud, and misconduct, by assessing an applicant’s underlying attitudes toward honesty and their level of aggressive tendencies.

The instrument provides organizations with data intended to mitigate risks associated with hiring individuals who may pose a threat to company assets or culture. The scale’s emphasis on both explicit honesty behaviors and implicit moral reasoning provides a broad evaluation of an applicant’s integrity profile.

Construct

The Applicant Review measures two main psychological constructs: Honesty and Aggressive Tendencies. The honesty construct is multi-faceted, comprising seven distinct subscales that contribute to an overall honesty score. These subscales delve into various aspects of moral and ethical decision-making in professional contexts.

The seven components used to define and measure the honesty construct include: personal honesty, honesty of others, blame for dishonesty, definition and standards of honesty, punishment for dishonesty, moral reasoning, and past behavior. The items are segregated into four thematic parts, measuring social attitudes (42 items), personal behaviors (24 items), past behaviors (11 items), and future intentions (5 items), alongside items dedicated to measuring aggressive tendencies.

Validity

Evidence supporting the validity of the Applicant Review is presented across several domains, detailed extensively in the technical manual.

• Face Validity: This was established through the straightforward nature of the items, which directly assess attitudes and behaviors related to honesty and integrity in the workplace.
• Construct Validity: Support for construct validity was garnered through statistical analysis, specifically factor analysis, which identified and confirmed the seven distinct underlying factors (subscales) contributing to the overall honesty construct.
• Concurrent Validity: The scale utilized the known-group technique to establish concurrent validity, comparing scores between groups known to differ on the measured construct (e.g., comparing employees with known integrity issues versus employees without).

Further detailed information regarding evidence based on test content, response processes, internal structure, and relations to other variables is available in the accompanying technical manual, which also includes the results of various validation studies.

Reliability

The reliability of the Applicant Review has been assessed using both internal consistency measures and test-retest reliability.

• Test-Retest Reliability: A study involving 30 college students measured over a one-week interval demonstrated strong temporal stability, yielding correlations ranging from 0.80 to 0.89 for five of the subscales. A separate test-retest study involving 44 students resulted in a correlation of 0.83 for the overall honesty score, indicating high consistency over time.
• Internal Consistency: Internal consistency was measured using alpha coefficients for the seven subscales within the original standardization sample. The coefficients were reported as follows: 0.73 (personal history and honesty of others), 0.66 (blame for dishonesty), 0.76 (definition/standards of honesty), 0.77 (punishment), 0.71 (moral reasoning), and 0.69 (past behavior). These values generally indicate acceptable to good internal consistency across the derived factors.

Factor Analysis

Factor analysis was a critical step in establishing the internal structure and construct validity of the Applicant Review. This analysis successfully identified seven primary factors that underpin the comprehensive honesty score.

The identification of these seven factors (personal honesty, honesty of others, blame for dishonesty, definition and standards of honesty, punishment, moral reasoning, and past behavior) confirms that the scale measures a multidimensional construct of integrity rather than a single, monolithic trait. The statistical support provided by the factor analysis reinforces the theoretical framework upon which the scale was built.

Instrument

Test Type: Integrity Test / Pre-employment Screening Inventory

Format: 102 self-report items divided into two main scoring sections (Likert-type scales and frequency scales).

Language Available: English (United States)

Population Group: Applicants and employees in various organizational settings (e.g., retail, industrial, academic).

Age Group: Adults and older students (implied working age and above, including graduate and high school students in validation samples).

Population Details: The standardization sample included 33,332 individuals drawn from 10 diverse organizations across the United States, including retail, convenience, electronic, specialty, grocery, small, and hardware stores. Validation studies also included graduate students, students at an alternative high school, and store managers.

Test Methodology: Paper-and-pencil or computer administration. Scoring yields an honesty score ranging from 0 to 99, interpreted as a percentile score. Section 1 utilizes a 4-point scale (Strongly Disagree=1 to Strongly Agree=4). Section 2 utilizes a 5-point frequency scale (Always=1 to Never=5).

Keywords

Personnel selection, organizational behavior, test-retest reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha, moral reasoning, integrity, employee theft, known-group technique.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source content.

Correspondence Address: Stanfordville, NY: CHC Forecast (Publisher address).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Applicant Review was originally published in 1983 by CHC Forecast. The scale has undergone extensive revisions in 1985, 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1996. A technical manual and computer scoring services are available, suggesting that usage requires licensing or purchase from the publisher (CHC Forecast). Specific fee structure and permission requirements are not detailed in the source material but are typically managed commercially.

Reference’s

Cherrington, D. J., and Cherrington, J. O. (1983). Applicant Review. Stanfordville, NY: CHC Forecast.

Clark, J. P., and Hollinger, R. C. (1983). Theft by employees in work organizations: Executive summary. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Jones, J. W. (1991). Preemployment honesty testing: Current research and future directions. Westport, CT: Quorum Books.

Principles for the validation and use of personnel selection procedures. (1987). College Park, MD: Department of Psychology (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology), University of Maryland.

Rest, J. R., and Narvaez, D. (1994). Moral development in the professions. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Items of the Applicant Review

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. I dislike helping people who are intentionally rude and nasty.
2. I get bored very easily when I have to do the same thing over and over.
3. Most people usually tell the truth.
4. I often think it would be an exciting intellectual challenge to steal something just to see if I could get away with it.
5. Buying merchandise on sale is dishonest because stores don’t receive a fair value for their merchandise.
6. Looking for ways to beat the system is just human nature.
7. A person who has taken company property should not be trusted in another job handling company money.
8. If an employee is caught stealing $600 from a company but promptly pays it back, he should not be fired and nothing should happen to him.
9. Most companies are not very concerned about honesty and do not care much about theft so long as the amounts are small.
10. Sales representatives who pad their expense accounts should be fired even if they only add an extra $10 or $15 per month.
11. Most customers are honest and if they receive too much change they will return it.
12. Nearly every worker has stolen something from his or her company at one time or another.
13. A long-term 50-year-old employee admitted that for 22 years he had stolen about $500 each year without being caught. He said he started stealing because he was underpaid and an examination revealed that he was only getting about three-fourths of what others were getting for similar work. (Use this to answer statements 13–16.)
14. This man should be arrested.
15. Criminal charges should be placed against him, and he should receive a criminal record.
16. This man should be sent to jail.
17. This man is not a thief; the company is the thief and owes him back pay for cheating him.
18. In some situations there are good reasons why it is all right to cheat a company.
19. If I saw one of my coworkers take $5 from the cash register, I would report it to management.
20. The average employee will tell his boss about a fellow employee who is stealing company money.
21. I always drive legally and never exceed the speed limit.
22. It would really bother me if I knew someone I worked with was stealing little things now and then, even if I never saw it happen myself.
23. The average policeman would accept money to overlook a traffic violation if he thought he could avoid getting caught.
24. Everyone has a price and can be bribed if the conditions are right.
25. A supervisor knew that three of her subordinates had been stealing small amounts of merchandise from the company for five years, but did not report it. The supervisor should be fired even though she did not steal herself.
26. If all the people who stole things at work were fired, three-fourths of the country would be out of work.
27. Most companies are unfair and try to cheat people working for them.
28. When an employee takes pens, paper, and envelopes from the company for her own personal use, she is stealing.
29. I have frequently associated with fellow employees who admitted they were stealing merchandise from the company.
30. If the manager of a theater offered to let me in without paying, I’d insist on paying anyway.
31. Most sales clerks deserve to steal a little now and then because they are so badly underpaid.
32. I am an honest person and would never steal or cheat.
33. I am always courteous even to people who are disagreeable.
34. If one of my friends was really broke and needed help, I would feel good about letting this friend use my employee discount.
35. Stores are primarily responsible for most of the shoplifting that occurs in them because of their carelessness.
36. If my coworkers violated company rules by taking small items, I would try to ignore it; it is better to get along with your coworker than to hassle them about stealing.
37. A person who sees a fellow employee steal from the company but does nothing about it is also guilty of a dishonest act.
38. If I were a store owner and caught one of my employees stealing $50 from me, I would prosecute her.
39. There is nothing wrong with buying stolen merchandise as long as I have nothing to do with stealing it.
40. There is nothing wrong with taking damaged goods from the company without permission if they are just going to be thrown away.
41. Making personal long-distance phone calls on your employer’s phone without permission is stealing.
42. The average sales clerk steals at least $10 each month from the company.
43. If a person took money from a company for a good cause and paid it back with interest six months later, he should tell his boss and take a chance of getting fired.

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1. When things go wrong, I lose my temper.
2. If a pay phone gave me back my quarter after I finished my call, I would mail the quarter to the phone company.
3. If someone asks me how they look and I think they look awful, I will lie a little to avoid hurting their feelings.
4. When I get angry with my employer, I want to damage company property.
5. Salesmen who do not drink alcoholic beverages should feel free to add $60 to $75 to their monthly expense statements to make their expenses the same as others.
6. I have been completely honest in reporting my income taxes.
7. Supervisors who hassle employees deserved to be slapped or hit.
8. If I committed a crime with a friend and I got caught, I would take the blame myself and not tell on my friend.
9. If I mailed three cereal box tops to get a free baseball card and the company sent me two cards by mistake, I would immediately return the extra card.
10. When I am provoked, I get into fist fights.
11. If the conditions were right, I could be tempted to steal something from the company.
12. If I came home and found a sales clerk failed to add a $1.00 item to my bill, I would immediately return and pay the $1.00 to the store.
13. When people refuse to go along, I find it necessary to threaten them with physical force.
14. When I was in school, I used to cheat on exams.
15. If I stole little things from my employer, such as paper, pens, and envelopes, I would really feel guilty.
16. I shout at people when they do things wrong.
17. Even though I may not do it, I think about clever ways to steal without getting caught.
18. When vending machines give me too much change, I send the money to the vending machine company.
19. I will hit or slap people who really deserve it.
20. If a nine-year-old child asked my opinion of a picture she painted and I thought it was really ugly and sloppy, I would tell a lie; it’s better to lie a little than tell the truth in this situation.
21. When I find money on the sidewalk, I take it to the police, even when it’s less than one dollar.
22. I find myself in situations in which I am forced to physically defend myself.
23. When I read stories or see movies of famous outlaws, I usually find myself cheering for the outlaws and hoping they get away with it.
24. When customers accidentally receive too much change, I think “good for them; they deserve to win now and then.”