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Today's business organizations are increasingly looking to select employees who will perform better on the job, make good team workers, be more committed to the organization, stay longer on the job, be good organizational citizens, and make good ethical decisions. Human resource managers employ a variety of selection tests to increase the likelihood of obtaining employees with these desirable characteristics and behaviors. Many of these characteristics and behaviors can be predicted with reasonable accuracy with the use of trait-based personality measures. Often, these tests require the respondent to make a self-assessment of global traits that are independent of the organizational setting or situation. But are these tests maximal in predicting variance of a performance criterion? Biographical data (biodata) inventories have been suggested as a viable and superior means of measuring individual differences in personality characteristics that are predictive of work outcomes ([19] Mumford et al. , 1996).
Biodata questionnaires are used to measure applicants' past behaviors or attitudes that have resulted from experiences that may be predictive of future job performance ([14] Mael, 1991). These types of questionnaires have shown great promise in personnel selection because they predict job performance and are less likely to be biased against women and minorities than other types of measures ([30] Stokes et al. , 1994). Biodata instruments also lend themselves well to modeling work situations and integrating organizational contexts into item content. Whereas many existing measures of integrity and other personality variables typically ask the respondent to self assess on global traits and tendencies, biodata items ask for the respondent to simply indicate how often they have engaged in particular activities under certain circumstances that underscore traits. This format takes the assessment out of the hands of the test taker and into the hands of the test developer and user.
The current study attempts to target individual difference constructs for the purpose of biodata item and scale development. Research suggests biodata methodology is superior in capturing dispositional constructs compared to traditional trait-based measures (i.e. "personality" scales) of the same constructs when predicting organizational outcomes ([2] Barrick and Mount, 1991; [7] Hough et al. , 1990; [15] Manley et al. , 2002). Biodata items can tap the behavioral domain of a particular construct within an organizational setting and...