However, although rare, deliberate distortion, passive non-compliance, and general carelessness in following instructions do occur. There is a variety of possible reasons for this. An individual may be rushed to complete the measure and answer the last few dozen items more or less at random. A respondent who feels coerced into the testing situation may reflect a lack of motivation by answering randomly. An individual may not understand written English well enough to follow directions and interpret items meaningfully.
Simple carelessness is another possibility.
A person may, for instance, confuse the number of an item in the booklet with some non-corresponding location on the answer sheet. It is appropriate to make provisions for these possibilities in interpreting the results of psychological instruments. All of our measures are designed to both detect and avoid faking and motivated distortion. Unlike many other personality measures, special item-selection procedures are used to suppress the social desirability component of each item, thereby reducing the opportunity for 'faking good' or 'faking bad . Methods for detecting nonpurposeful responding, based on responses to items from our measures are described in detail in the corresponding test Manuals.