How to Prepare for Integrity Test Questions

An integrity test is a self-reporting test containing questions about your personality traits, behaviors, opinions, and values on issues related to honesty and reliability such as interpersonal relationships, workplace loyalty, work ethic, working with company money, and more. They can also examine problematic personal backgrounds with questions about criminal records, debts, chronic disease, drug or alcohol abuse, etc.

Integrity tests have a time limit, and every question is accompanied by a stopwatch-like graphic that shows the candidate how much time they have left to answer the question.  Some tests will allow candidates to answer after the time runs out, while others will not. Your response time for each question might also be recorded to be later used to evaluate your answers. 

The statements below are from real integrity tests. While in a real integrity test, you will be asked to answer whether you agree or disagree with the statement, here we aim to help you understand what each statement tests. This is important because understanding what exactly you’re being asked is the true challenge of reliability tests. As such, we included three different statements, each representing a different candidate quality or trait.

Honesty test questions evaluate your attitude to various illegal or undesirable behavior by either asking directly about your attitudes and past experiences of shady behaviors, or indirectly asking about general preferences and interests in your life.

Accordingly, questions in an honesty test are divided into direct/overt integrity questions and veiled-purpose questions:

Overt Integrity Questions are designed to ask applicants about their attitudes toward specific dishonest actions, particularly theft, and their past involvement in such behavior.

• Do you think that you are too honest to take something that is not yours?
• How much do you dislike doing what someone tells you to do?
• Do you think it is stealing to take small items home from work?
• Do you believe that taking paper or pens without permission from your work place is stealing?
• Do you believe most employers take advantage of the people who work for them?

Here is an example of this kind of integrity question as may appear in the test: 

*Source - JobTestPrep Integrity Test Practice Pack

Veiled Integrity Questions ask candidates about their attitude towards a range of seemingly unrelated issues. As you can see below, it is often not clear what quality is being evaluated, and what is the expected reliable answer.

• True or False: I like to take chances.
• On average, how often during the week do you go to parties?
• True or False: I am usually confident about myself.
• I feel lonely even when I am with other people {all of the time, most of the time, sometimes, almost never, never}.
• How often do you make your bed (every day, never, etc.)?
  

Here is an example of a Veiled Purpose question similar to one you could see on an integrity test: 

*Source - JobTestPrep Integrity Test Practice Pack

Integrity tests appear most commonly in the hiring stage, but they are also used when employees are transferred between different positions within the same company.

Integrity tests are commonly given in addition to personality assessments and situational judgment tests. They are specifically common in Insurance and investment companies, banks, and other companies in the financial sphere, as well as in federal positions recruitment and other governmental, public service, and security-related fields. 

Employers entrust their employees with the well-being of their business and need to be able to trust them to act honestly and reliably. To make sure employees can be trusted, employers ask to identify potential risks before their employment.

Different integrity tests examine your behavior in a similar way but focus on different types of questions and different aspects of your behavior. For example:

• The CISI IntegrityMatters test asks a lot of questions that focus on typical workplace situations.
• The IP2000 test, on the other hand, is a psychometric integrity test that focuses more on questions about the candidate’s general attitudes and traits.
• The Veritas Integrity Test is known for being very brief (taking about 25 minutes) and focuses on rooting out ‘delinquent behaviors’ such as gambling and drug use.​

There are many cases of reliable, trustworthy candidates who cannot pass integrity tests and cannot figure out why. Most often this happens because candidates don't understand what lies behind the questions, answer in a too strict and rational a way, Over-trying to impress the employer, or answer authentically thinking it will express their reliability.