The aim of this thesis was to examine various factors that impact on the design, development and use of effective paper and pencil pre-employment integrity tests and to take these factors into account in the development of a personality-based test. Findings indicated that current definitions of the concept purported to be examined by integrity tests were inadequate. In particular, it was argued that honesty is not the concept under investigation, rather the focus should be on a concept of Employee Compliance. Compliance takes into account the requirement that dishonest behaviours go against formal organisational rules as well as the strong link between not acting in a counterproductive manner and trait conscientiousness.A survey of 279 UK-based personnel managers indicated that base-rates of dishonest behaviour in the UK ranged from around 60% to 80% if the behaviour is considered infrequent and/or not serious. For the more serious behaviours (such as alcohol abuse and sabotage) rates were between 23% to 44%. Honesty/integrity was viewed by personnel managers as the most important attribute within employees and this was consistent across industry sector. For example, honesty/integrity was considered more important than interest in the work, general ability, general personality and work experience. A large proportion of participants reported using references (78%) and/or interviews (66%) to assess for honesty and integrity, with few using honesty and integrity tests (2.5%).Further, integrity tests in general were shown to compare favourably against 6 psychometric quality issues and in most cases better than other methods that are used to examine honesty/integrity. In particular, integrity tests were shown to be valid, reliable, fair and practical methods of assessment. The scope of integrity tests depends upon the type of tests used. They can measure both narrow (theft) and broad criteria (employee deviance). Some issues were raised in respect to training, labelling and false positiveissues within such tests.Personality was shown to play a key role in whether an individual is likely to act in a dishonest manner. Results from two studies, using a Five-Factor Model framework showed that intended and reported dishonest behaviour related negatively to conscientiousness, stability and social desirability and positively to extraversion. An individual likely to engage in dishonest workplace behaviour will tend to have casual attitude to rules, view the world as hostile and become alienated, seek excitement and be impulsive, and be socially insensitive. The Five-Factor framework was then utilised in the development of a personality-based test that examined the construct of Employee Compliance. This new Compliance scale was shown to be valid, reliable, fair, acceptable and practical in relation to integrity tests in general and other methods of assessing honesty/integrity. The issue of whether a 'honest' individual is a theoretical ideal rather than a practical requirement was discussed and whether such individuals would be appropriate for all types of jobs.A laboratory study indicated that cheating behaviour was not only a function of personality (Compliance) but also the interaction between Compliance and group norms supporting cheating. A significant interaction emerged between Compliance and group norms on cheating behaviour. Specifically, the highest amount of cheating occurred for those individuals low in Compliance (hence likely to cheat) in the situation where group norms promoted cheating. Such findings have implications for integrity testing as not only does the dispositional aspect of dishonest behaviour need to be examined, organisations also need to consider the impact that the work environment may have of promoting or reducing dishonest behaviour
