Sixty questions do not define a common instrument

Reading a short-form study carefully

Ashton and Lee's HEXACO-60 paper concerns a particular short questionnaire within an established research programme. It is useful for considering how broad content can be represented economically. The fact that Machiavelli's Social Dispositions questionnaire also contains sixty statements does not make the instruments equivalent or transfer published findings between them.

An example of content lost through shortening

Suppose a fictional designer wants to shorten a fairness domain. The original pool covers credit for shared work, disclosure of an advantageous mistake, consistent allocation rules, and response to an undeserved benefit. Selecting only the statements that sound most similar may produce a tidy set about sharing credit. The resulting score could look coherent while no longer representing the broader definition. A small item count is not itself the problem; the missing situations are.

The opposite problem is possible too. A designer could preserve one statement about every conceivable moral issue and create a broad collection whose answers have little common meaning. The design task is to state which situations belong together and why. That account should be written before deciding which items appear statistically convenient. Sensitive wording deserves additional care because a declaration of virtue can invite an idealized answer without clarifying ordinary conduct.

Applying the distinction to interpretation

A participant who endorses transparent dealing should not receive a certificate of honesty. A participant who describes more self-protection should not be assigned a moral label. Discussion can instead examine a specific exchange: what information was shared, what rule governed the benefit, and whether another person could question the arrangement. This preserves a behavior-focused conversation while allowing disagreement about what fairness required. The questionnaire cannot resolve that ethical disagreement through arithmetic.

What an original short form would require

A proposed development study could first ask independent reviewers to map every statement to its intended content and identify omissions. Participant interviews could then explore interpretations of words such as reasonable, deserved, and equitable. Only after that work should response patterns guide revision. Any shorter form would need direct comparison with its own intended scope, including whether conclusions change for different settings or language groups. The appropriate claim would concern that specific version and use. Neither an attractive report nor a familiar number of questions supplies the missing evidence.

Continue the reading

Writing questions about sensitive character themes →