Despite the fact that Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology consultants provide interventions meant to benefit companies, many organizations remain skeptical about the effectiveness of consultants and have concerns about I-O psychologists, their methods, and the results they promise. This skepticism may manifest through resistance towards interventions, resulting in strained client-consultant relationships and a decreased interest in future use of I-O consultant services. Understanding and evading these negative outcomes is highly relevant to the interests of I-O psychology as a whole, but research has yet to quantitatively examine factors contributing to an organization’s decision to pursue I-O consultation. The purpose of the current study is to develop a diagnostic tool to understand perceptions that organizations may have about I-O consultants and to link these to a company’s likeliness to purchase I-O consulting services. The proposed measure is made up of seven individual facets regarding both organizational and consultant entities: readiness for change, duration of project, cost/benefit, depth of intervention, internal/external implementation, faith in I-O expertise, and attitudes towards consultants. Items will be refined through pilot testing, and the measure structure will be analyzed through the use of factor analytic methods. Unique samples will be used to examine the factor structure of the measurement through both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We hypothesize that the measure will exhibit a seven-factor structure, entailing each dimension as its own factor. We also hypothesize that a two-factor structure will also fit the measure data, including one for organizational factors and one for consultant factors. Additionally, we hypothesize that scores on the measure will positively predict the likelihood to purchase I-O consulting services. Utilization of this measure should enable consultants to quantitatively locate and target specific insecurities and skepticism contributing to organizational resistance toward I-O interventions, potentially increasing the effectiveness of these interventions and boosting consumer confidence in I-O psychologists
