Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology, Industrial and Organizational

Date of Defense

7-25-2011

Graduate Advisor

Miles Patterson

Committee

Alice Hall

Therese Macan

Mark Tubbs

Abstract

Social effectiveness is critical to mastering social interactions and “office politics”, however there is ambiguity in defining these social effectiveness constructs, in particular, political skill. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the construct validity of political skill utilizing a partial multitrait multimethod approach. The participants were undergraduate students with substantial work experience. Discriminant validity was examined with measures of political skill, emotional intelligence, self-monitoring, and social skill. Convergent validity was assessed with independent interpersonal sensitivity and behavioral measures of political skill. The results indicated a lack of construct validity evidence for political skill, with significant overlap among the scales. In particular, a CFA yielded one general social effectiveness factor. Further, the interpersonal sensitivity and behavioral measures were not significantly related to the political skill scale. The implications for the lack of construct validity for political skill are discussed and directions for future research are proposed.

OCLC Number

746900349

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Psychology Commons

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