What is it about?
Measures of political skill have been shown to be significant predictors of job performance across a variety of occupations and have consistently been related to positive work-related behaviors and outcomes. A reliability generalization study was conducted on the Political Skill Inventory (PSI), currently the most frequently utilized measuring instrument for assessing the construct of political skill, to determine the weighted mean internal consistency reliability estimate of the PSI and its four dimensions across samples while also examining the effect of six potential sources of measurement error that may impact the internal consistency reliability of the PSI and its four dimensions. Potential sources of measurement error variance that could impact the typical score reliability of the PSI and three of the four PSI subscale dimensions were identified and are discussed.
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Why is it important?
The examination of the reliability of the PSI and its four subscale dimensions are vital to the construction of generalizable theories of political skill in future research. In practice and in research, the accurate implementation and administrative use of political skill assessments depend on the reliability of political skill measures. The results of the reliability generalization study provide novel insights to the organizational politicking literature by examining to the extent and under what situational conditions that the Ferris et al., 2005 Political Skill Inventory (PSI) measure has an acceptable weighted Cronbach’s alpha internal-consistency reliability coefficient by examining the reliability estimates across all identified samples in the organizational politicking literature, a finding that adds to the body of research examining the measurement integrity of the PSI. Thus, the results of the current meta analysis offer invaluable and novel insights of the psychometric characteristics of the PSI that adds to the body of evidence for the validity of the PSI measure and can be utilized by future researchers and practitioners.
Perspectives
The primary objective of the present research was to utilize RG techniques to investigate the magnitude and variabilities of reliability estimates that were reported across existing studies using of the PSI developed by Ferris et al. (2005). Across the samples that used and reported reliability estimates for the full Ferris et al. (2005) PSI measure, the sample-weighted alpha coefficient of the 18-item PSI was .89 (SD = .044). Potential sources of measurement error variance that could impact the typical score reliability of the PSI and three of the four PSI subscale dimensions were identified and are discussed.
Ryan Jacobson
Florida International University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Reliability Generalization Study of the Political Skill Inventory, SAGE Open, April 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2158244017706714.
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