2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

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The correlations between the SSI and the personality dimensions generally support the notion that
the SSI measures behaviour dimensions in an expected manner. Thus the validity of the SSI is
supported by these findings.
Influence behavior
The participants in this study apply for leader functions at the level of non-commissioned officer or
officer. It is expected that the more socially skilled persons will self-select for these jobs. In order
to further judge convergent and discriminant validity, the relationship between SSI-scores and a
measures of influence behaviour is explored. The WIMAS measures four styles of influencing
others. The influence styles are exerting influence by manipulating others, influencing others by
diplomacy, influencing others by assertive behaviour, and influencing others by open and direct
requests.
Manipulation Diplomacy Assertiveness Directness
EE .13 -.03 .18 .19
ES .13 .30 .16 .29
EC .21 .25 .12 .18
SE .01 .25 .37 .40
SS .15 -.20 -.35 -.43
SC -.07 .31 .44 .39
SSI-total .16 .31 .31 .33
Table 4: Correlation between influence behaviour and the SSI-scales.
The SSI was originally composed of seven scales, the seventh being named “social manipulation”.
With exception of a correlation with emotional control, social manipulation did not correlate with
the other social skills (Riggio, 1986). The present findings confirm these results indicating that
manipulation is perhaps more a cognitive skill than a social skill.
Positive correlations are found between the active social skills as measured by the SSI, and the
influence styles assertiveness, diplomacy and directness. These findings further support the claim
that the SSI measures behaviour.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
In this study a translation in Dutch of the Social Skills Inventory was pre-tested on a sample of
applicants for military leadership functions. Although this study may have suffered from a in
imperfect sample, most results of this pre-test are seen as encouraging, and stimulate further
exploration of the instrument. Even so, there are two concerns regarding parts of the instrument.
Firstly, the internal consistency of the Dutch translation of the emotional expressivity scale is found
to be inadequate. This finding could partly be caused by the Dutch culture. For instance, items with
regard to touching other people may be prone to cultural different answers since the Dutch may not
be very inclined to touching others. Also, a self-selection effect may have caused some lowering of
the internal consistency of the emotional expressivity scale because items regarding the expression
of emotion may be less appealing to persons that want to join the armed forces.
Secondly, the social sensitivity scale causes some thought because of the strong positive correlation
between social sensitivity and neuroticism, and he low correlation or even negative correlations
between social sensitivity and the other scales. Inspection of the items that compose the scale learns
that some items may touch the topic of neurotic behaviour.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003