Pl. Roth et al., The effect of method variance on relationships between the work ethic and individual difference variables, J BUS PSYCH, 14(1), 1999, pp. 173-186
A great deal of research relating the work ethic to other individual differ
ence variables has been conducted using questionnaires to measure all the v
ariables. Many researchers believe that using a single method of measuremen
t for multiple constructs results in artificially inflated correlations. A
Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the work ethic, locus of control, and consc
ientiousness reveals that approximately 16% of the variance in measures of
these constructs is a function of the method of measurement. This suggests
that correlations in work ethic research based on only one method of measur
ement may be overstated.