Abstract
The purpose of this study was to develop an indigenous brief scale of Machiavellianism among working population. Initially, a pool of 70 items was generated which was formed through focused discussion with a group of some randomly working people. Furthermore, their verbatim was compiled and phrases and with that three domains were formed. Again, the items that were found repetitive and dubious were dropped down keeping only 50 items. Later on, those 50 items were reviewed by the experts as per the item review method based on its content, grammar and sentence formation. It was reduced later to 27 items excluding repetitions. This new measure was then developed and validated over two studies. In study 1, the 27 items were administered on 200 new participants as a self-report measure on a 7-point rating scale. The sample for the study was selected from different working sectors using random sampling technique. Maximum Likelihood factor analysis revealed two factors which were labelled according to their emerging themes like Self Interest and Emotionally Manipulative. The inter scale correlation between the retained factor were significant and Cronbach Alpha showed a satisfactory reliability. In study 2, this scale provided evidence for the convergent and divergent validity of the BMS-06. The tool can be used on working population in order to determine their Machiavellian trait and also an insight can be drawn about the working culture which may or may not encourage this trait within individuals.
Keywords: Machiavellianism, Test construction, Validation, Standardization.