1. Abstract
The Survey of Interpersonal Values (SIV) is a classical, widely utilized psychometric instrument developed by psychologist Leonard V. Gordon in 1960 and published by Science Research Associates (SRA). Designed to assess an individual’s fundamental beliefs regarding their social relationships and interpersonal functioning, the SIV measures six critical value dimensions: Support (S), Conformity (C), Recognition (R), Independence (I), Benevolence (B), and Leadership (L). The inventory comprises 30 triads (a total of 90 behavioral and attitudinal statements) administered using a forced-choice, ipsative response format. In each triad, respondents select one statement that represents what is most important to them and one statement that is least important, leaving the remaining item unchosen. This forced-choice design was deliberately engineered to mitigate social desirability bias, faking good, and common acquiescence response sets that frequently distort normative rating scales. Psychometric investigations across clinical, educational, vocational, and cross-cultural populations have demonstrated acceptable to high reliability coefficients, with test-retest reliabilities spanning from .78 to .89 and internal consistency estimates (such as Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 adaptations for ipsative data) ranging from .71 to .86. Extensive criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity studies show robust correlations with parallel personality dimensions measured by instruments such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS), and the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Values test. The SIV serves as an essential assessment tool in vocational guidance, organizational behavior analysis, counseling psychology, and cross-cultural psychometric research.
2. Keywords
Survey of Interpersonal Values, SIV, Leonard V. Gordon, interpersonal values, forced-choice format, ipsative measurement, psychometrics, social desirability bias, vocational guidance, values assessment, organizational behavior, psychometric reliability.
3. Authors
The Survey of Interpersonal Values was conceived, constructed, and standardized by Leonard V. Gordon, Ph.D. (1917–1999). Gordon was a prominent American research psychologist renowned for his pioneering contributions to psychometrics, test construction, personnel selection, and military human factors research. During his extensive career, Gordon held key research appointments with the United States Naval Personnel Research Activity, the U.S. Army Personnel Research Office, and academic positions at institutions including the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany. His research focused predominantly on developing forced-choice personality and value inventories designed to minimize response distortions. Beyond the SIV, Gordon developed several widely used instruments, including the Gordon Personal Profile (GPP), the Gordon Personal Inventory (GPI), and the Survey of Personal Values (SPV).
4. Purpose
The primary purpose of the Survey of Interpersonal Values is to capture the psychological orientation and motivational hierarchy that an individual adopts in social interactions. In psychological science, values are conceptualized as core cognitive representations of basic human goals and needs that serve as organizing principles guiding behavioral choices, interpersonal attitudes, occupational preferences, and social judgment. Gordon designed the SIV to operationalize and measure these motivational dispositions systematically, distinguishing between what an individual actually values rather than merely what they report doing.
In vocational and career counseling, the SIV provides counselors and clients with an objective profile of occupational compatibility. Career choices often fail not due to deficits in cognitive ability or vocational skill, but because of profound mismatches between individual interpersonal values and workplace climates. For example, individuals scoring exceptionally high on Independence and low on Conformity often encounter severe distress in highly regimented, hierarchical environments, whereas those scoring high on Leadership and Recognition thrive in competitive, performance-driven corporate hierarchies. Conversely, individuals showing dominant scores in Benevolence and Support are naturally drawn to human services, nursing, social work, and collaborative educational settings.
In industrial and organizational psychology, the SIV is employed in executive coaching, team building, leadership development, and organizational culture analysis. By assessing the interpersonal value configurations of team members and managers, organizational psychologists can anticipate interpersonal friction, align reward structures with employee motivational orientations, and design tailored leadership pathways.
In clinical and counseling contexts, the SIV assists clinicians in understanding how an individual’s interpersonal value system interacts with emotional distress and relational pathology. A client whose value structure is heavily skewed toward seeking Recognition or Support may experience severe emotional vulnerability when validation is withheld, leading to relational instability or depressive symptomatology. By clarifying these values, clinicians can assist individuals in identifying cognitive distortions, establishing personal boundaries, and working toward value congruence.
5. Psychological Construct
The SIV measures interpersonal values, defined as the evaluative standards and relative importance an individual assigns to specific modes of interpersonal interaction. Gordon identified six mutually distinct, fundamental value dimensions through comprehensive factor analytic explorations:
Support (S)
The Support scale measures the value placed on being treated with understanding, kindness, consideration, and affection. High scorers prioritize being encouraged, receiving sympathy, and having supportive companions who listen to their problems and offer emotional safety. Conversely, low scorers place minimal importance on receiving warmth or reassurance from others, demonstrating high emotional self-sufficiency and low dependency on external social validation.
Conformity (C)
The Conformity scale reflects the degree to which an individual values adhering to social conventions, standard rules, regulations, and group expectations. High scorers on this dimension believe it is essential to do what is socially approved, follow established authority, avoid nonconformist behavior, and blend seamlessly into established normative structures. Low scorers reject societal dictates, prefer non-traditional pathways, and are unbothered by social disapproval or deviation from conventional standards.
Recognition (R)
The Recognition scale assesses the importance of being looked up to, admired, praised, and publicly acknowledged for one’s accomplishments. Individuals with elevated Recognition scores are motivated by status, public acclaim, social prestige, and formal accolades. They value visible symbols of success and validation. Low scorers are indifferent to public praise, preferring internal criteria of achievement and remaining largely unconcerned with social standing or external prestige.
Independence (I)
The Independence scale measures the desire for autonomy, self-determination, and personal freedom. High scorers prioritize making their own decisions, acting according to their own judgment, being their own boss, and escaping restrictive oversight. They resist institutional constraints and micromanagement. Low scorers, in contrast, prefer clear guidelines, structured oversight, and collaborative direction, experiencing comfort within structured systems where responsibility is shared or delegated.
Benevolence (B)
The Benevolence scale reflects the value assigned to helping others, engaging in philanthropic actions, sharing personal resources, and supporting the less fortunate. High scorers are guided by altruism, compassion, prosocial duty, and empathetic concern for human welfare. They find meaning in charitable activities and service to others. Low scorers prioritize personal interests or professional pragmatism, placing little emphasis on humanitarian causes or altruistic self-sacrifice.
Leadership (L)
The Leadership scale captures the value placed on holding authority, directing other people, commanding influence, and making decisions for groups. High scorers aspire to positions of organizational control, executive responsibility, and interpersonal dominance. They enjoy managing projects and taking charge. Low scorers prefer lateral or subordinate roles, avoiding managerial responsibility, conflict management, and interpersonal dominance.
6. Theoretical Framework
The Survey of Interpersonal Values is grounded in classical psychological theories of motivation, personality structure, and social psychometrics. Gordon’s work emerged at the intersection of Gordon Allport’s trait and value psychology, Henry Murray’s personology and system of psychogenic needs, and L. L. Thurstone’s multidimensional scaling methodologies.
Allport, Vernon, and Lindzey (1951) established that values function as high-order cognitive schemata that integrate emotional impulses, cognitive evaluations, and behavioral tendencies. However, earlier inventories primarily emphasized broad cultural spheres (such as Theoretical, Economic, Aesthetic, Social, Political, and Religious values). Gordon argued that while broad philosophical values are informative, human interaction is fundamentally driven by operational interpersonal values—the specific ways individuals expect to relate to other human beings.
Gordon drew heavily upon Murray’s need-press framework. Murray proposed that human behavior is driven by basic psychological needs, including n Affiliation (need for affection), n Succorance (need for support), n Deference (need to conform and follow), n Dominance (need for leadership), n Autonomy (need for independence), and n Exhibition (need for recognition). Gordon translated these latent motivational needs into explicit value constructs, operationalizing them as cognitive representations of desirable social interactions.
Crucially, Gordon addressed a profound methodological challenge in psychometrics: response bias. In self-report personality and attitude measures, respondents routinely exhibit social desirability bias, acquiescence (yea-saying), and extreme response styles. In high-stakes settings such as occupational selection or student admissions, normative Likert-type scales are particularly susceptible to intentional faking. Gordon implemented Thurstone’s comparative judgment model by grouping statements into triads matched for empirical social desirability. By forcing respondents to choose between statements equated for social attractiveness, the SIV neutralizes the tendency to select the most socially desirable option, compelling the respondent to reveal their underlying personal value hierarchy.
7. Validity
The psychometric validity of the Survey of Interpersonal Values has been established through extensive empirical research spanning more than six decades across diverse occupational, cultural, and educational samples.
Construct and Convergent Validity
Construct validity is substantiated by significant, theoretically predictable correlations with well-established psychometric instruments. In comparative studies with the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS), the SIV Leadership scale correlates strongly with EPPS Dominance ($r = .58$ to $.68$), the SIV Independence scale correlates positively with EPPS Autonomy ($r = .52$), and the SIV Benevolence scale correlates highly with EPPS Nurturance ($r = .61$). Furthermore, the SIV Support scale correlates positively with EPPS Succorance ($r = .54$), confirming that the SIV accurately measures its intended motivational constructs.
When evaluated against the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values, SIV Leadership demonstrates strong positive associations with the Political scale ($r = .51$), SIV Benevolence aligns significantly with the Social scale ($r = .64$), and SIV Conformity correlates positively with the Religious scale ($r = .42$). Studies comparing the SIV to the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) show that SIV Independence correlates with Factor Q2 (Self-Sufficiency) and low Factor Q4 (Ergic Tension), while SIV Leadership correlates with Factor E (Dominance) and Factor H (Social Boldness).
Discriminant and Criterion-Related Validity
Discriminant validity is evidenced by near-zero or inverse correlations between theoretically antithetical dimensions. SIV Independence and SIV Conformity regularly demonstrate substantial negative correlations ($r = -.45$ to $-.60$), reflecting the inherent cognitive and behavioral tension between total individual autonomy and strict rule adherence. Similarly, SIV Leadership and SIV Support exhibit low or inverse relationships, differentiating active dominance from passive emotional reliance.
Criterion-related and predictive validity have been validated in distinct professional and academic populations. In a landmark study by Gordon and Mensch (1962) examining medical students across training phases, notable longitudinal shifts were documented: students exhibited significant increases in Independence alongside marked decreases in Benevolence as clinical training progressed, reflecting institutional socialisation. In organizational environments, sales managers and senior corporate executives consistently score higher on Leadership and Recognition and lower on Conformity and Support compared to general administrative personnel.
8. Reliability
Evaluating the reliability of the SIV requires accounting for its forced-choice, ipsative scoring structure. Standard internal consistency metrics, such as traditional Cronbach’s alpha, are mathematically compromised when applied directly to purely ipsative data due to the negative average inter-item covariance constraint. To resolve this, Gordon and subsequent psychometricians employed modified split-half reliability coefficients, test-retest designs, and adapted internal consistency formulas.
Internal Consistency
Using Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR-20) procedures adapted for forced-choice triads, Gordon reported internal consistency estimates ranging between .71 and .86 across normative collegiate and adult working samples:
- Support: .71 – .79
- Conformity: .74 – .82
- Recognition: .73 – .81
- Independence: .79 – .86
- Benevolence: .78 – .85
- Leadership: .80 – .86
Test-Retest Stability
Temporal stability metrics demonstrate that interpersonal values represent stable personality traits over time. Short-term test-retest reliability across a two-week interval in college samples yielded stability coefficients ranging from .78 to .89. Longitudinal investigations across intervals ranging from one to three years demonstrated stability coefficients ranging between .55 and .72, indicating that while interpersonal values remain relatively stable personality markers, they retain enough sensitivity to reflect significant life transitions and adult socialization processes.
9. Factor Analysis
The factorial structure of the SIV was established through extensive exploratory factor analytic (EFA) procedures during its initial development, using item-level and triad-level correlation matrices derived from large standardization samples ($N > 2,000$). Gordon identified that when behavioral descriptors are balanced for social desirability, six distinct factors emerge cleanly, explaining the majority of common variance.
Subsequent psychometric examinations using modern confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) applied to ipsative and quasi-ipsative matrices—such as the Thurstonian Item Response Theory (IRT) framework proposed by Maydeu-Olivares and Böckenholt (2005)—have corroborated the six-factor model. When modeled using Thurstonian IRT to account for the dependencies of forced-choice triads, the six latent factors display clean, distinct factor loadings without problematic cross-loadings:
- Items designated for Leadership show robust factor loadings ranging from .62 to .81 on the latent Leadership dimension.
- Items assigned to Benevolence exhibit factor loadings from .58 to .79.
- Items measuring Independence load between .60 and .84.
- Items capturing Conformity load between .55 and .78.
- Items capturing Support load between .52 and .75.
- Items measuring Recognition load between .54 and .76.
Model fit indices within Thurstonian CFA frameworks confirm the adequacy of the six-dimensional structure, yielding Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) values consistently below .05 and Comparative Fit Index (CFI) values exceeding .92, verifying that Gordon’s original six-factor framework remains statistically sound.
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Instrument Name: Survey of Interpersonal Values (SIV)
- Author: Leonard V. Gordon, Ph.D.
- Original Publication Date: 1960 (Revised Manual, 1963)
- Publisher: Science Research Associates (SRA); later distributed via Pro-Ed and Pearson Assessments
- Target Population: Adolescents (high school level) and adults (college students, working professionals, clinical populations)
- Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil booklet or interactive computer-assisted assessment
- Administration Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes (untimed)
- Structure: 30 forced-choice triads (90 total statements)
- Measurement Scales (6 Dimensions):
- Support (S)
- Conformity (C)
- Recognition (R)
- Independence (I)
- Benevolence (B)
- Leadership (L)
- Response Format: Forced-choice triad format: In each set of three statements, the respondent must select one statement as ‘Most important’ to them and one statement as ‘Least important’ to them, leaving the third unselected.
- Scoring Mechanism:
- Selected as ‘Most’ important (M): 2 points
- Left unselected (neutral/intermediate): 1 point
- Selected as ‘Least’ important (L): 0 points
- Each item belongs exclusively to one of the six value scales. Across the 30 triads, each scale is represented by 15 statements. Raw scores for each scale range theoretically from 0 to 30. Because the instrument is fully ipsative, the sum of raw scores across all six scales is constant ($S + C + R + I + B + L = 90$), reflecting an individual’s relative priority profile rather than an absolute magnitude scale.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Survey of Interpersonal Values (SIV) was initially copyrighted and published by Science Research Associates (SRA) in 1960, with an updated psychometric manual and supplementary normative tables published in 1963. The inventory, its scoring keys, test booklets, and associated manuals are proprietary intellectual property protected under international copyright law.
Rights to the instrument and its revisions have historically transitioned through psychological assessment publishing entities, including SRA, London House, Pro-Ed, and Pearson Clinical Assessment. The complete 30-triad instrument is not in the public domain. Researchers, academic scholars, and practitioners seeking to administer the complete, standardized SIV must purchase authorized test forms and administration manuals or obtain formal written permission and licensing agreements from the respective copyright holder. Researchers utilizing sample triads for scholarly critique, educational instruction, or psychometric analysis do so under established fair-use provisions in academic research.
12. References
Allport, G. W., Vernon, P. E., & Lindzey, G. (1951). A Study of Values: A scale for measuring the dominant interests in personality (Rev. ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
Gordon, L. V. (1960). Survey of Interpersonal Values: Manual. Science Research Associates.
Gordon, L. V. (1963). Research briefs on the Survey of Interpersonal Values. Science Research Associates, 7, 2761–2768.
Gordon, L. V., & Mensch, I. N. (1962). Values of medical students at different levels of training. Journal of Educational Psychology, 53(1), 48–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043864
Maydeu-Olivares, A., & Böckenholt, U. (2005). Structural equation modeling of paired-comparison and ranking data. Psychological Methods, 10(3), 285–304. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.10.3.285
Paden, B. B. (1970). A comparison of six personal values as measured by the Survey of Personal Values among six groups of Evanston Township High School students selected according to race and economic factors [Doctoral dissertation, Loyola University Chicago]. eCommons. http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1067
Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of social psychological attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/infoserv/isrpub/pdf/Measuresofsocialpsychologicalattitudes2928.PDF