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The research behind the assessments

Each instrument on Org Behavior Lab comes from published research. Below, every assessment is listed with the articles behind it: where the instrument came from, the theory it rests on, the evidence for it, and, where relevant, its limits.

We link to a free copy whenever one is legally available. Other articles link to the publisher; most university libraries provide access.

HEXACO-60

Available now

Measures: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience

A six-factor model of personality that grew out of studies of personality-descriptive words across many languages. Its distinctive addition to the Big Five is Honesty-Humility: sincerity, fairness, modesty and avoidance of greed, which predicts ethical and counterproductive behavior at work.

License: Free for noncommercial research and teaching use (Ashton & Lee).

  • Source instrument

    Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO-60: A short measure of the major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(4), 340–345.

    Introduces the 60-item form used on OB Lab, ten items per factor drawn from the longer HEXACO-PI-R. Reports internal consistency and agreement between self-reports and reports by people who know the respondent well, supporting its use when testing time is limited.

  • Theory

    Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 150–166.

    The core theoretical case for six factors rather than five. Summarizes the cross-language evidence and explains how splitting Agreeableness and Emotionality, and adding Honesty-Humility, accounts for behaviors such as exploitation, cooperation and risk-taking that the Big Five captures less well.

  • Validation

    Lee, K., & Ashton, M. C. (2004). Psychometric properties of the HEXACO Personality Inventory. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(2), 329–358.

    Development and validation of the full HEXACO Personality Inventory, including the facet structure beneath each factor. The HEXACO-60 is a shortened version of this instrument.

  • Workplace evidence

    Lee, K., Ashton, M. C., & de Vries, R. E. (2005). Predicting workplace delinquency and integrity with the HEXACO and five-factor models of personality structure. Human Performance, 18(2), 179–197.

    Shows that Honesty-Humility predicts workplace delinquency and integrity test scores beyond what the Big Five factors explain. A useful starting point for class discussions of ethics and counterproductive work behavior.

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Big Five (IPIP-50)

Available now

Measures: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Intellect/Openness

The five-factor model is the most widely used framework in personality research. OB Lab uses the 50-item Big-Five Factor Markers from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), a public-domain item set built to measure the same five domains as established commercial inventories.

License: Public domain (International Personality Item Pool).

  • Theory

    Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26–42.

    Establishes the adjective markers that define the five factors. The IPIP 50-item Big-Five Factor Markers were written to measure the same five domains.

  • Source instrument

    Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. Personality Psychology in Europe, Vol. 7, pp. 7–28. Tilburg University Press.

    Launches the International Personality Item Pool and argues that personality science needs freely available items so that measures can be compared, improved and used without licensing costs.

  • Validation

    Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 84–96.

    Reviews the growth of the IPIP and the evidence that IPIP scales correspond closely to the proprietary scales they were designed to parallel.

  • Workplace evidence

    Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1–26.

    The landmark meta-analysis linking personality to job performance. Conscientiousness predicted performance across occupational groups; other factors mattered for particular jobs and criteria, such as Extraversion for managers and sales roles.

  • Team evidence

    Bell, S. T. (2007). Deep-level composition variables as predictors of team performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 595–615.

    Meta-analysis of how team members’ personality and values relate to team performance. Team levels of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness and Openness, along with preference for teamwork, predicted performance, with stronger effects in field teams than in laboratory groups. Directly relevant to forming and coaching student teams.

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DISC (OSPP)

Available now

Measures: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness

DISC describes observable work style along four dimensions and is popular in workplace training because it is easy to learn and discuss. OB Lab uses the open-source OSPP DISC Assessment Test from the Open-Source Psychometrics Project.

Interpret with care. DISC rests on a much thinner peer-reviewed base than the Big Five or HEXACO, and the OSPP development report describes item selection but no reliability statistics. Use DISC results to start conversations about team style, not to make decisions about people.

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Open-Source Psychometrics Project).

  • Theory

    Marston, W. M. (1928). Emotions of normal people. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

    The origin of the four-part model: dominance, inducement, submission and compliance, described as patterns of emotional response to one’s environment. Marston did not build a test; later commercial DISC instruments adapted and relabeled his categories.

  • Source instrument

    Open-Source Psychometrics Project (n.d.). Development of the OSPP DISC Assessment Test. openpsychometrics.org.

    Describes how items were chosen: candidate items written from DISC type descriptions were kept when people who confidently identified with a type scored highest on them. Read it to understand what the scale is built to capture and its limits.

  • Validation

    Jones, C. S., & Hartley, N. T. (2013). Comparing correlations between four-quadrant and five-factor personality assessments. American Journal of Business Education, 6(4), 459–470.

    One of the few peer-reviewed studies relating a four-quadrant (DISC-style) assessment to a five-factor measure, conducted with business students. Helpful for showing students how DISC styles map onto the more established Big Five.

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Jungian Type (OEJTS)

Available now

Measures: Extraversion–Introversion, Sensing–Intuition, Feeling–Thinking, Judging–Perceiving

Jungian type instruments sort preferences into four pairs and report a four-letter type. OB Lab uses the Open Extended Jungian Type Scales (OEJTS), an open alternative to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Interpret with care. Research consistently finds that these preferences are continuous, not two distinct types, and that people near the middle of a scale can change letters on retest. Treat a four-letter type as a convenient summary, and look at how strong each preference is.

License: Public domain (Open-Source Psychometrics Project).

  • Theory

    Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types (H. G. Baynes, Trans.; rev. R. F. C. Hull). The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 6. Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)

    Jung’s theory of attitudes (extraversion and introversion) and psychological functions, the conceptual foundation for all type instruments.

  • Source instrument

    Jorgenson, E. (2015). Development of the Open Extended Jungian Type Scales 1.2. Open-Source Psychometrics Project.

    Technical report for the OEJTS. Items were screened using large samples of respondents who already knew their Myers-Briggs type, and the scale was compared against other free type tests.

  • Validation

    McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (1989). Reinterpreting the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator from the perspective of the five-factor model of personality. Journal of Personality, 57(1), 17–40.

    Finds that the four type scales line up with four of the Big Five: Extraversion, Openness (Sensing–Intuition), Agreeableness (Thinking–Feeling) and Conscientiousness (Judging–Perceiving). Argues for reading the scales as continuous dimensions.

  • Critique

    Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary comments regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(3), 210–221.

    A concise review of the reliability and validity concerns with type instruments, including type changes on retest and weak evidence for distinct types. Recommended reading before using type results with students or employees.

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Goal Orientation (Work)

Available now

Measures: Learning, Performance-Prove, Performance-Avoid

Goal orientation describes why people pursue achievement: to develop competence (learning) or to demonstrate it and avoid looking incompetent (performance). VandeWalle’s work-domain instrument is the standard measure in organizational research.

License: Published research instrument (VandeWalle, 1997).

  • Source instrument

    VandeWalle, D. (1997). Development and validation of a work domain goal orientation instrument. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 57(6), 995–1015.

    Introduces the 13-item, three-dimension measure used on OB Lab. Separating performance orientation into "prove" and "avoid" dimensions was a key contribution, since the two relate differently to learning and performance.

  • Theory

    Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040–1048.

    The foundational account of learning versus performance goals and the mastery-oriented and helpless response patterns they produce when people face difficulty.

  • Validation

    Payne, S. C., Youngcourt, S. S., & Beaubien, J. M. (2007). A meta-analytic examination of the goal orientation nomological net. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(1), 128–150.

    Synthesizes the research on goal orientation’s antecedents and outcomes. Learning orientation relates positively to self-efficacy, feedback seeking, learning and performance; avoid orientation relates negatively.

  • Team evidence

    Dragoni, L. (2005). Understanding the emergence of state goal orientation in organizational work groups: The role of leadership and multilevel climate perceptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(6), 1084–1095.

    Explains how leaders and group climate shape members’ goal orientation in a given situation. The source for the behavioral descriptions in OB Lab’s goal orientation results.

  • Review

    Vandewalle, D., Nerstad, C. G. L., & Dysvik, A. (2019). Goal orientation: A review of the miles traveled and the miles to go. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 115–144.

    A comprehensive review of two decades of goal orientation research in organizations and the open questions that remain.

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Achievement Goals (Academic)

Available now

Measures: Mastery-Approach, Mastery-Avoidance, Performance-Approach, Performance-Avoidance

The 2×2 achievement goal framework crosses how competence is defined (mastery or performance) with whether a person approaches success or avoids failure. This version was developed and validated with students in classroom settings.

License: Published research instrument (Elliot & McGregor, 2001).

  • Source instrument

    Elliot, A. J., & McGregor, H. A. (2001). A 2×2 achievement goal framework. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 501–519.

    Proposes the four-goal framework and the 12-item questionnaire used on OB Lab. Establishes mastery-avoidance as a distinct goal and shows that the four goals have different antecedents and consequences.

  • Theory

    Elliot, A. J., & Church, M. A. (1997). A hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(1), 218–232.

    Introduces the approach–avoidance distinction within performance goals, the step that led to the 2×2 framework.

  • Validation

    Elliot, A. J., & Murayama, K. (2008). On the measurement of achievement goals: Critique, illustration, and application. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(3), 613–628.

    Critiques earlier achievement goal items and presents a revised questionnaire (AGQ-R). Useful for understanding the measurement debates around the 2×2 model.

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