Context, Cognition, and Common Method Variance: Psychometric and Verbal Protocol Evidence

Researchers continue to debate the importance of (item) context effects, which are often thought to produce inflated percept-percept correlations in organizational self-reports. Using Feldman and Lynch's (1988) theory of self-generated validity, we propose five conditions under which such context effects are most likely to occur and to have an impact on substantive conclusions. The proposed effects are tested with psychometric and verbal protocol data from 208 subjects responding to an organizational justice questionnaire, using a 3 (types of context) by 2 ("think aloud" versus "silent") experimental design. Psychometric results revealed context effects on scale means, reliabilities, and some of the relations between constructs. Respondents' concurrent verbal protocols from the "think aloud" condition provided evidence for the cognitive basis of these effects.