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Research & White papers

Research Overview

The goal of Research is to keep The Myers-Briggs Company at the leading edge in providing assessment products and solutions. We do this by collaborating with publishing to develop assessments that meet the highest professional standards of accuracy and utility and by leading the development of assessment products and services that address the needs of our customers.

When it comes to making a choice for an assessment, you want to know that it is reliable and valid, backed by volumes of data. We want to help make this choice as easy as possible for you. Whether you are currently using these assessments or want to add one to your portfolio, here you will find all the information you need.

Our Research offers:

  • Easy-to-access reliability and validity data for each of our assessments
  • White papers presenting best practices when using an assessment within certain applications
  • Groundbreaking research reports from our research team
  • Updated supplemental data on norms based on demographic data to stay current within the general population

Meet our Research Team

Why should you rely on our team of educated professionals to provide you with reliable information? Meet the team below to find out:

Dr. Rich Thompson is the Divisional Director of Research and manages the Research Team, leading the company’s research efforts in the U.S. and worldwide. He provides strategic input on cross functional product development efforts. Thompson has authored multiple in-house surveys for customers and represents The Myers-Briggs Company at major conferences such as SIOP, APA, ASTD and SHRM. He earned his Masters and Ph.D. in Psychology, with a minor in management, from Texas Tech University.

Dr. Michael Morris is a Senior Research Scientist, primarily focused on international research and development for The Myers-Briggs Company’s assessments. He manages large scale research projects, working with internal researchers, clients, international distributors, external academics, and consultants to develop assessments that are appropriate for local populations while retaining consistency to facilitate cross-border use. Morris’ work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, and he has authored assessment feedback reports that have been translated into several languages and used around the world. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Iowa State University.

Nancy Schaubhut, a Senior Research Associate, holds a M.S. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Schaubhut conducts product-related research and development for The Myers-Briggs Company’s assessments and has authored or co-authored numerous publications and technical reports, including the MBTI® Type Tables series.

MBTI® Global

MBTI® Manual Supplements Series for the Global Step I™ and Step II™ Assessments

Here you will find information on the MBTI® Manual Supplements Series which accompanies the MBTI® Manual for the Global Step I™ and Step II™ Assessments (4th edition). The MBTI® Global Assessment was based on a combined sample of 16,733 participants, and the supplements below provide detailed information about each of the samples, including psychometric data and sample descriptions.

Full details on the construction of the assessments, their reliability and validity can be found in the MBTI® Manual for the Global Step I™ and Step II™ Assessments (4th edition)

About the MBTI® Global Step I™ and Step II™ assessments

The MBTI® Global Step I™ and Step II™ questionnaires represent the latest versions of the instrument. They are based upon a single set of global data with a common set of items; this means that the same questionnaire can be taken all over the world. The MBTI® Global Assessment was based on a combined sample of 16,733 participants. The sample included 9,002 women and 7,771 men. The average age of the sample was 41, with ages ranging from 15 to 88 years. Full details on the construction of the assessments, their reliability and validity can be found in the MBTI® Manual for the Global Step I™ and Step II™ Assessments (4th edition).

MBTI® Global Manual Supplements

Twenty-three individual samples were compiled and included in the Global Step I™ and Global Step II™ assessments. Within the 23 samples, data were collected in 19 languages and in 20 countries. The MBTI® Manual Supplements Series provide detailed information about each of the samples included in the global research, including psychometric data and sample descriptions.

MBTI® Global Manual Technical Briefs

Data using the global research version of the assessment were also collected in Indonesia (Indonesian), Israel (Hebrew), Japan (Japanese), Poland (Polish), Russia (Russian), South Korea (Korean), Thailand (Thai), and Turkish. For a variety of reasons these data were not included in the global sample. They are however addressed in the technical briefs for each of the samples.

MBTI®

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) assessment is the best-known and most trusted personality assessment tool available today. As many as 1.5 million assessments are administered annually to individuals, including to employees of many Fortune 500 companies.

The MBTI® assessment has been revised several times since it first appeared in 1942. New item formats and scoring methods were developed and tested first by Isabel Myers and later by professional psychometricians, with each revision leading to technical improvements over the previous form. The most recent forms are Form M and Form Q, both of which use item response theory (IRT)-based scoring and item selection. Validity of both Form M and Form Q has been examined through behavioral observations, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, correlations with related measures, and even brain scans.

The research below supports the reliability and validity of the MBTI® tool, as well as best practices and industry trends when applying the assessment results in different settings. You will also find information on ways to pair the instrument with other assessments for maximum effectiveness.

Reliability and Validity

Product Research Reports

White Papers

Pairing the MBTI® Assessment

Strong

Strong Interest Inventory®

The Strong Interest Inventory® (Strong) assessment measures career and leisure interests. It is based on the work of E. K. Strong Jr., who originally published his inventory on the measurement of interests in 1927. The assessment is often used to aid people in making educational and career decisions.

The current General Representative Sample (GRS) for the Strong consists of 2,250 individuals (50% men, 50% women) and is representative of the gender, racial, and ethnical makeup of the U.S. workforce (Donnay, Morris, Schaubhut, & Thompson, 2005). All scales are measured using the GRS, except the Occupational Scales (OS).

Internal consistency reliabilities of all scales are high. General Occupational Theme (GOT) reliabilities range from .90 to .95, Business Interest Scales (BISs) from .80 to .92, and Personal Style Scales (PSSs) from .82 to .87. Internal consistency reliability is not appropriate for the OSs because the scales contain items with heterogeneous content and are empirically derived.

The Strong Interest Inventory® Manual is the most comprehensive guide to administering the Strong assessment and features information on the tool’s reliability and validity, detailed descriptions of the scales, and O*Net™ codes. This page contains the research to further support the reliability and validity of the Strong tool, as well as best practices and industry trends when applying the assessment results in different settings. You will also find information on ways to pair the instrument with other assessments for maximum effectiveness.

Reliability and Validity

Product Research Reports

White Papers

Pairing the Strong Assessment

TKI®

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI® )

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI®) has been used for 40 years and is the leading measure of conflict-handling behavior. In 2002, the TKI®; assessment became available via the Internet using The Myers-Briggs Company’s online assessment delivery system, the SkillsOne® website. With online administrations, data are collected as part of The Myers-Briggs Company’s ongoing commercial operations.

Over time these operations created a large archive of completed TKI® assessments, as well as a vast pool of participants from which a large representative norm sample could be developed. This has made it possible for The Myers-Briggs Company’s Research Division to develop updated norms for the instrument to use as the basis for scoring and determining results.

The updated norms, developed in 2007, were based on a sample of 4,000 men and 4,000 women, ages 20 through 70, who were employed full-time in the United States at the time they completed the assessment. Data were drawn from a database of 59,000 cases collected between 2002 and 2005 and were sampled to ensure representative numbers of people by organizational level and race/ethnicity.

This page contains the research to support the reliability and validity of the TKI® tool, as well as best practices and industry trends when applying the assessment results in different settings. You will also find information on ways to pair the instrument with other assessments for maximum effectiveness.

Reliability and Validity

Product Research Reports

White Papers

Pairing the TKI® Assessment

FIRO®

Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation™ (FIRO®)

The Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior™ (FIRO-B®) instrument was created by William Schutz, Ph.D. Schutz developed the FIRO-B theory to aid in the understanding and predicting of how high-performance military teams would work together.

Schutz began with the premise that “people need people,” and used the term interpersonal to indicate any interaction, real or imagined, occurring between people.

The current norm sample for the FIRO-B® instrument includes a U.S. national sample of 3,091 individuals who took the assessments in 1997 (Hammer & Schnell, 2000). In examining the internal consistency reliability of each measure for the national sample, results indicate that reliability coefficients for all measures are good, ranging from .85 to .96. Test-retest reliability coefficients also demonstrate good reliability – ranging from .71 to .85 – for three different samples reported in the FIRO-B® Technical Guide (Hammer & Schnell, 2000).

Research results also support the validity of the instrument. A number of studies have shown the FIRO-B® assessment to be related to measures of leadership, personal value, and relationships/friendships. Additionally, relationships are also found with assessments such as the MBTI® Form M instrument and the CPI™ instrument (Hammer & Schnell, 2000).

The FIRO-B® Technical Guide provides the FIRO-B® practitioner with current information on the theory, construction, interpretation, research, statistical underpinnings, and uses of this widely used instrument. This page contains the research to further support the reliability and validity of the FIRO® tools, as well as best practices and industry trends when using applying the assessment results in different settings. You will also find information on ways to pair the instrument with other assessments for maximum effectiveness.

Reliability and Validity

Product Research Reports

Pairing the FIRO-B® Assessment

CPI™

California Psychological Inventory™ (CPI™)

The goal of the CPI 260® assessment, which is derived from the full 434-item California Psychological Inventory™ (CPI™) instrument, is to give a true-to-life description of the respondent in clear, everyday language (Gough & Bradley, 2005).

The scales of the CPI 260® instrument were developed empirically – that is, scale items were selected on the basis of associations with external or non-test specifications of the attribute to be assessed. This method emphasizes validity over reliability and was used to design scales capable of predicting important criteria such as managerial performance and an employee’s dependability.

As discussed in the manuals for the 434-item inventory (Gough & Bradley, 2002; Gough & Cook, 1996), abundant empirical theoretical source material exists for the CPI™ instrument, which enjoys more than 55 years of usage, translations and study in more than 40 languages, and a bibliography of approximately 2,000 titles.

The CPI™ Manual reports internal consistency (alpha) coefficients for the CPI™ assessment scales based on a random sample of 3,000 males and 3,000 females ranging from .36 to .86 with a median of .75. Test-retest correlations for high school students over a one-year interval range from .51 to .73 with a median of .66. Test-retest correlations for adults over a 10-year interval range from .49 to .85 with a median of .77. The CPI 260® Manual is a technical product that offers a clear view into the construction and interpretation of the CPI 260® instrument.

The research below further supports the reliability and validity of the CPI 260® tool, as well as best practices and industry trends when applying the assessment results in different settings. You will also find information on ways to pair the instrument with other assessments for maximum effectiveness.

Reliability and Validity

Product Research Reports

White Papers

Pairing the CPI™ Assessment

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