Entwicklung eines Fragebogens zur Messung von Eigenverantwortung oder : "Es gibt nichts Gutes, außer man tut es"

Personal responsibility is an important concept in society. There are several reasons why high personal responsibility is desirable in the context of work. The main objective of the three studies presented in this article was to examine the meaning and measurement of personal responsibility (n1 = 103 employees, n2 = 120 students, n3 = 85 students). Results indicate an appropriate psychometric quality of the newly developed 18-item scale. In addition, encouraging findings point to the validity of this scale because a positive correlation with goal commitment for solving a difficult task was found. Further important results are that personal responsibility is moderately related to conscientiousness and openness to experience within the Big Five personality framework. The correlation with social responsibility is also modest in size so that personal responsibility can be conceptualized as a new, independent construct. Furthermore, a correlation between personal responsibility and social desirability indicates that personal responsibility is generally judged positively. Studying potential advantages of personal responsibility in the context of personnel psychology with the newly developed scale seems to be worthwhile.