Measuring Conflict-Related Behaviors: Reliability and Validity Evidence Regarding the Conflict Dynamics Profile

Abstract

For a number of years, the dominant approach to measuring individual differences in how people respond to interpersonal conflict has been the dual-concerns model, which assesses five broad conflict styles said to result from one’s standing on two underlying dimensions: concern for self and concern for other. This article describes the development of a new instrument, the Conflict Dynamics Profile, that takes a different, explicitly behavioral approach to measuring responses to conflict. The Conflict Dynamics Profile assesses 15 specific behavioral responses to provocation in one’s life. Some of these responses are constructive, and some are destructive; some are active, and some are relatively passive. Four studies are reported that establish the psychometric adequacy of the instrument, including evidence for internal reliability, test-retest reliability, freedom from social desirability contamination, correlation with related constructs, and agreement between self-ratings and ratings by observers. Implications of these findings and the potential usefulness of the new instrument are discussed.