Social Introversion Definition

The construct that our group chose to measure was social introversion. For the purposes of our project, our operationalized definition of social introversion stated that one is an introvert if one has a tendency to contemplate and observe before engaging in activities, possesses a high level of self-awareness on one’s actions, feels comfortable in solitude, and tends to reflect on one’s life. As we analyzed other assessments that similarly measured social introversion, we began to realize that social introversion had been unfairly characterized. According to Ward (1998), who wrote the measurement of social introversion in the MMPI-2, “social introversion is positively correlated with self-consciousness, social avoidance and self/other alienation”

The participants were asked to rate the statements on a likert scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” depending on how they felt about each statement. The items were graded on a numerical scale between positive two and negative two points. The option “Strongly agree” was worth two points, “agree” was worth one, “disagree” was negative one, and so on. Six of our questions relied on reverse keying, as these were the questions that truly questioned the degree to which an individual was socially introverted. Questions two, three, seven, fourteen, seventeen, and eighteen were switched from their original value to find the true score of the test. For example, if an individual scored a negative one on question seven, the number would be reversed to a positive one in order to find the true score. This was because the results were broken up into three numerical sections signifying social introversion, ambiversion, and extroversion. A score past positive 1.28 meant the individual was socially introverted, however, a score of negative 9.28 meant the test taker was socially extroverted. Therefore, certain questions had to be reversed depending on the response