Low-Stakes Testing and Psychological Reactance: Using the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale to Better Understand Compliant and Non-Compliant Examinees

The current study examined whether psychological reactance differs across compliant and non-compliant examinees. Given the lack of consensus regarding the factor structure and scoring of the Hong Psychological Reactance Scale (HPRS), its factor structure was evaluated and subsequently tested for measurement invariance (configural, metric, and scalar) across two types of examinees: examinees that attended university assessments (i.e., compliant examinees) and examinees that skipped these assessments (i.e., non-compliant examinees). Measurement invariance of the HPRS across compliant and non-compliant examinees was supported, enabling the testing of latent mean differences, which provided known-groups validity evidence: non-compliant examinees reported significantly higher levels of reactance than did compliant examinees. Implications for low-stakes testing internationally, including strategies to increase compliance, are discussed.