Psychology Commons^™

Construct Validation Of Political Skill, Katie Thenhaus

Dissertations

Social effectiveness is critical to mastering social interactions and “office politics”, however there is ambiguity in defining these social effectiveness constructs, in particular, political skill. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the construct validity of political skill utilizing a partial multitrait multimethod approach. The participants were undergraduate students with substantial work experience. Discriminant validity was examined with measures of political skill, emotional intelligence, self-monitoring, and social skill. Convergent validity was assessed with independent interpersonal sensitivity and behavioral measures of political skill. The results indicated a lack of construct validity evidence for political skill, with significant overlap among …