Reliability and validation study of the online instinctual variant questionnaire

Leaders often manage both chaos and diversity. We can improve our leadership
effectiveness by better understanding our motives and behaviors, and those of our
followers. A potential tool for leadership development is the Instinctual Variant
Questionnaire (IVQ). Based on Enneagram theory (pronounced “ANY-a-gram”), this
online instrument is designed to assist users in identifying how three behavioral drives, or
variants, may be helping or hindering their dispositions. Each reside in us, but one
typically dominates, one supports, and one tends to impede our behaviors and motives.
Through an understanding of one’s variants and order of preference, it is possible to
increase self-awareness of our motives and behaviors. While the IVQ proposes to
measure one’s preferred order of variants, no formal test of reliability and/or validity was
found published prior to this study. The purpose of this study was to test the reliability
and criterion-related validity of the IVQ. Reliability was tested using Cronbach’s alpha.Results indicated alpha values between .82 and .85 for the three variants measured,suggesting internal reliability.Validity was tested using data collected from a 120-person sample. The instrument’s results were compared to self-reported primary variant types obtained from those who had a high confidence level in accurately identifying their most dominant type. The IVQ was found to be a strong predictor of the three self-reported variant types. Three binary logistic regression models were run. Omnibus tests were significant for all three models at the p < .001 level (self-preservation chi-square statistic = 82.57, social chi-square statistic = 56.47, and sexual chi-square statistic = 51.77). A multinomial regression model, using self-reported dominant types as the dependent variable and IVQ scores as the independent variable, confirmed predictability of the IVQ. When z-scores were obtained based on the classification hit-rates from all four independent models, classification accuracy was found to be a significant improvement over guessing. Further analysis also suggested age, gender, marital status, education level, or number of years spent studying the Enneagram do not factor into IVQ results. Support for the IVQ to beused as a tool by leaders to better understand themselves and their followers is presented.