Montefiori, Lara C L;
(2025)
Behaviour-Based Assessment: a proposed solution against response distortion in workplace assessment.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Assessment faking, a volitional behaviour in which candidate engage to portray themselves more desirably to prospective employers, is a serious challenge that companies face in the context of candidate selection but which has also far-reaching consequences related to job performance and deviance. Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain how and why faking emerges, and they have broadly identified three factors responsible for this behaviour: intention/motivation, ability, and opportunity to fake. While motivation should not be expected to radically change across assessment formats, it should be possible to target ability and opportunity to fake through assessment development strategies aimed at impeding faking by design. This thesis explores how a relatively new assessment method, designed to elicit and observe behavioural differences stemming from the neurobiological mechanisms underlying personality traits, may offer a solution to this issue. Five studies, featuring a mix of research designs and samples, provide strong evidence that it is not possible to fake Behaviour-Based Assessment. This thesis reports that intentions to fake BBAs are affected by low perceptions of control over these assessments and that people lack the ability to articulate strategies to fake them; it also provides evidence of failed attempts to achieve desired scores through faking in experimental setting. However, the most critical contributions of this thesis were to explain why the response options in BBAs do not lend themselves to faking, and to reveal that, contrary to what happens with other test formats, the data of real-life candidates show markers of optimal but not inflated performance. Implication for practice in selection and future directions are discussed.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Behaviour-Based Assessment: a proposed solution against response distortion in workplace assessment |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208455 |
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