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DISC assessment

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DISC assessments are behavioral self-assessment tools based on the 1928 DISC emotional and behavioral theory of psychologist William Moulton Marston. The tools are designed to predict job performance. It is estimated that 10 million people take the DISC assessment each year.[1] However, despite the assessment’s frequent use, the scientific validity of DISC has been contested and is by some considered to be a pseudoscience.[2] Due to having four quadrants, similarities have been examined between the four elements, Hippocrates’ taxonomy, and the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.[1]

DISC is an acronym, the theory describing personality through four claimed central traits: dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance. Alternative naming variations include: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness or cautiousness.[1]

Types

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The first self-assessment based on Marston's DISC theory was created in 1956 by Walter Clarke, an industrial psychologist. In 1956, Clarke created the Activity Vector Analysis, a checklist of adjectives on which he asked people to indicate descriptions that were accurate about themselves.[3] This self-assessment was intended for use in businesses needing assistance in choosing qualified employees.

Merenda, Peter F., and Clarke published their findings on a new instrument in the January 1965 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology.[4] Instead of using a checklist, the "Self Description" test asks respondents to make a choice between two or more terms. "Self Description" was used by John Geier to create the Personal Profile System in the 1970s. It was Geier who first used the Personal Profile System that used a force choice format based on a descriptive phrase to generate a profile. The Personal Profile System has been adapted and known by many other names including DISCUS, PDA, Predictive Index, Style Analysis, Insights Discovery, and Strategic Assessment.[1]

Theory

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DISC wheel

The DISC theory describes personality through four central traits:

  • Dominance: active use of force to overcome resistance in the environment
  • Inducement: use of charm in order to deal with obstacles
  • Submission: warm and voluntary acceptance of the need to fulfill a request
  • Compliance: fearful adjustment to a superior force

Marston described the DISC characteristics in his 1928 book Emotions of Normal People, which he generated from emotions and behavior of people in the general population. According to Marston, people illustrate their emotions using four behavior types: Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. [5]

People assessed as Dominant by the DISC assessment are described as being results and goal-orientated, assertive, and creative.[6] Those who are considered Dominant are also known to be risk takers and concealers of their emotions.[6] People assessed as Influential by the DISC assessment are described as enthusiastic, approachable, people-orientated, and optimistic.[6] Those identified as being Influential also tend to want to lead, however, they can be avoidant of details through socialization, and have a tendency to be disorganized.[6]  People receiving a result of Submission are described as being predictable, organized, systematic, friendly, helpful, good listeners, patient, and avoidant of risk.[7]  People receiving a result of Compliance are described as being thorough or well-prepared, factual, technically competent, reliable, sensitive, detail-oriented, routine-oriented, and not risk takers.[6]

Marston argued that these behavioral types came from people's sense of self and their interaction with the environment.[8] He based the four types on two underlying dimensions that influenced people's emotional behavior. The first dimension is whether a person views their environment as favourable or unfavourable. The second dimension is whether a person perceives themselves as having control or lack of control over their environment.[citation needed]

Uses

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Since Marston’s theory was developed in 1928 and the first assessment was created by Walter Clarke in 1956, researchers have been using DISC to study personality types in many fields including nursing and law enforcement. Studies have been conducted using the DISC assessment to draw conclusions about what personality types are located in different fields.  A study has been conducted on whether or not they could apply the DISC assessment to Twitter Tweets.[9] The Twitter study concluded that although more research needs to be done, tag words could be used to draw conclusions about people using text mining and the DISC assessment.

The DISC theory has been adapted for use in business applications.  For instance, an article published in the Bali Medical Journal cites a study using the DISC model to help determine a personality type’s counterproductive behavior.[10] Using mixed collection methods and applying the DISC assessment, the conclusion of the study was that most nurses have dominant (D) and conscientious ( C ) personality types.

The DISC assessment is normally administered by a 3rd party company.  It is administered in the form of a self-assessment. DISC assessments are promoted in workplaces to raise self-awareness, improve teamwork, make conflict more productive, develop stronger sales skills, manage more effectively, and train without judgment.[11] The self-assessment tools are designed for use in personnel management in businesses. DISC has been used to help determine a course of action when dealing with problems as a leadership team—that is, taking the various aspects of each DISC type into account when solving problems or assigning jobs.[12]

Results are typically displayed on a circle that are divided into quadrants. Each quadrant represents the four different dominant personality types. The personality types are further represented by an associated letter. The main personality types are additionally divided into thirds. Each of these sections represent further refinement of the results. A dot representing your personality type will be represented within the circle. The proximity of the dot to the center of the circle, as well as the relation to other sections indicates where the individual falls within this assessment.[13]

Psychometric properties

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The DISC assessment has demonstrated no ability to predict job performance as the validity is low. However, the assessment has high reliability, meaning that an individual will consistently get the same result over time.

Reliability

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During a study conducted by Dr. Larry Price, it was identified that when applying the McNemar’s nonparametric test to the DISC assessment that the agreement between the examinees' responses and the "DISC theoretical expectations" in the primary and/or close secondary styles had reached a “statistically significant” percentage, indicating that there was a high occurrence of repeatable answers.[14] These results were similar to a Russian pilot study found a coefficient of .89 for retesting after one week as well as research that was captured in a paper by the Scandinavian Psychological Association also found high levels of internal consistency in a normative DISC assessment.[7][15]

Validity

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Psychologist Wendell Williams has criticized the use of DISC in the employee recruitment process.[16] In his criticism, Williams argues that a good job performance test should be well constructed, have test-retest reliability, have Criterion Validity for criteria of job performance, and incorporate the theory of job performance in the test's design.

A 2013 German study studied the validity and reliability of a DISC assessment, Persolog, to see if it was up to standards for the TBS-DTk [17] the test assessment system of the Diagnostics and Test Board of the Federation of German Psychological Associations. The study found that it "largely" met the requirements in terms of reliability but not at all in terms of validity.[18]

During Dr. Price's study, he evaluated the validity of a version of the DISC assessment called the IML DISC instrument.[14] Dr. Price found that after administering IML DISC instrument to 12 certified behavior analysts, the total variance was 70% which falls in the acceptable range per the psychometric literature.[14] This study was focused on the intra-individual differences, which are the differences within the same subject as opposed to inter-individual differences, which are the differences between subjects.[14]

Perspectives

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Defenders

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Defenders point towards publications that focus on the assessment’s reliability and validity. Findings from Dr. Russell Watson's unpublished research report called, “A statistical comparison of the TTI Style Analysis and the Performax Profile System”, supports the opinions of the defenders.[19] Watson found when he asked participants “to rate the perceived accuracy of their DISC reports” that "nearly 90%" of them agreed with the reported information.[1][19] Defender’s may also highlight findings from Ogunyemi et. al’s article, “Associations between DISC assessment and performance in obstetrics and gynecology residents”, to support their claims about the DISC assessment.[20] Ogunyemi et. al determined that residents who could complete their “administrative duties”, “provide safe patient care”, and scored high on exams likely had high levels of “Dominance and Conscientious/Compliance” as well as lower levels of “Steadiness/Submission and Influence”.[20] Distributors of the assessment claim that the reports provide "high levels of scale reliability" being ".8 to .9", which defenders use to emphasize the reliability of DISC.[1] In fact, profiling assessments, which include the DISC assessment, have been "well received" and are a "proven method" for studying "multidimensionality in" people's personalities. [9] While the DISC assessment is not as in-depth as its competitors, such as Myers Briggs, defenders argue that those types of personality instruments lead to an overload of information for their users that cannot be applied to their lives as easily.[1]

Skeptics

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Skeptics of the DISC assessment believe that personality is a significant predictor “of workplace effectiveness”, however, they do not view the DISC assessment’s “model and methodology” as having the ability to accurately measure the intricate “dynamics of personality”.[1] In fact, skeptics credit the barnum effect or the forer effect as being the reason why individuals support the DISC assessment despite it being "structurally flawed".[1][21] Skeptics would consider Watson’s findings more credible had he included “controls to assess participants reactions to randomly generated reports”.[1] If researchers explored "response style", skeptics believe that this could help create "a more systematic measurement of personality" that could support "the common ground between personality theory and personality assessment".[22] However, the lack of substantial peer reviewed research that covers the DISC assessment influences the skeptic’s opinions on the assessment.[1] Skeptic’s argue that the DISC assessment contains an “incomplete map of personality”, where it fails to include personality traits like “emotional stability/neuroticism”.[1] Since the assessment includes only the “domain of fundamental traits of temperament”, skeptic’s believe it will not provide meaningful results.[1] Skeptics also consider the DISC assessment problematic due to its “Ipsative nature”, which can alter responses based upon people’s “levels of self esteem”, and it can provide results in only comparing “relative strengths for an individual” and not “across candidates”.[1][23]

Adversaries

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Adversaries of the DISC assessment can be categorized into those who consider the “DISC enterprise as irrelevant” and those who believe that the popularity of the assessment prevents advancements in “predictive power in selection decision making”.[1] Adversaries believe that the flawed foundation’s of DISC led to “distorted profiles” and that similar to other personality tests, have not shown evidence of “decent predictive power of important outcomes”.[1] While adversaries recognize the important role of personality in “work and life outcomes”, they only see personality as one of the many factors that play a part in “predictive power”. For adversaries, the DISISC assessment is viewed as a poorly designed and “executed attempt” of a “personality assessment”.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q AM Azure Consulting (2016-04-26). "DISC Based Personality Assessment" (PDF). Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  2. ^ "How Swedes were fooled by one of the biggest scientific bluffs of our time". Vetenskap och Folkbildning. Retrieved 2021-06-13.
  3. ^ Wallace, S. Rains; Clarke, WALTER V.; Dry, RAYMOND J. (September 1956). "The Activity Vector Analysis as a Selector of Life Insurance Salesmen". Personnel Psychology. 9 (3): 337–345. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.1956.tb01072.x.
  4. ^ Merenda, Peter F.; Clarke, Walter V. (January 1965). "Self description and personality measurement". Journal of Clinical Psychology. 21: 52–56. doi:10.1002/1097-4679(196501)21:1<52::AID-JCLP2270210115>3.0.CO;2-K. PMID 14283649.
  5. ^ Marston, William Moulton (1928). Emotions Of Normal People. Kegan Paul Trench Trubner And Company., Limited. pp. viii–x. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e Kruegar, Dale (1998). "Personality Characteristics of the Small Business Entrepreneur". Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship: 26–31.
  7. ^ a b Martinussen, Monica; Richardsen, Astrid M.; Vårum, Helge W. (5 August 2003). "Validation of an ipsative personality measure (DISCUS)". Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 42 (5): 411–416. doi:10.1111/1467-9450.00253. PMID 11771810.
  8. ^ Marston, William M. (1928). Emotions of Normal People. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd. pp. 405.
  9. ^ a b Ahmad, Nadeem; Siddique, Jawaid (2017-01-01). "Personality Assessment using Twitter Tweets". Procedia Computer Science. Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference, KES-20176-8 September 2017, Marseille, France. 112: 1964–1973. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2017.08.067. ISSN 1877-0509.
  10. ^ Aini, Qurratul (2021-12-28). "Detecting nurse's personality models with disc" (PDF). Bali Medical Journal.
  11. ^ "What is the DiSC assessment?". Discprofile.com. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
  12. ^ Beamish, G. (2005). How chief executives learn and what behavior factors distinguish them from other people. Industrial and Commercial Training, 37(3), 138–144.
  13. ^ Inscape Publishing (2007). "From DiSC Classic to Everything DiSC: How My Graph Became a Dot" (PDF). Inscape Publishing.
  14. ^ a b c d Price, Larry (2015). "DISC Instrument Validation Study" (PDF). Texas State University.
  15. ^ Chigova; Plyushch; Leskova (2019). "Organization of structured interaction on the base of psychographic characteristics within the model of personality traits DISC". IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. 483 (12097): 012097. Bibcode:2019MS&E..483a2097C. doi:10.1088/1757-899X/483/1/012097. S2CID 151063263.
  16. ^ "Dissecting the DISC". www.ere.net. 10 December 2008. Retrieved 2021-06-13.
  17. ^ "TBS-DTK". leibniz-psychology.org/en/.
  18. ^ "Persolog personality profile". econtent.hogrefe.com/. doi:10.1026/0033-3042/a000171.
  19. ^ a b Klassen, Peter (2004-02-29). "Style Insights – DISC Instrument Validation Manual" (PDF). College of DuPage.
  20. ^ a b Ogunyemi, Dotun; Mahller, Yonatan; Wohlmuth, Cinna; Eppey, Richard; Tangchitnob, Edward; Alexander, Carolyn (2011-09-01). "Associations between DISC assessment and performance in obstetrics and gynecology residents". The Journal of Reproductive Medicine.
  21. ^ "The Barnum Effect in the Assessment of Personality Types". www.idspublishing.com. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
  22. ^ Jackson, Douglas; Messick, Samuel. "APA PsycNet" (PDF). psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2022-11-15.
  23. ^ "DISC vs Enneagram". HR Profiling Solutions. Retrieved 2022-11-14.
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