Locus of Control: Chance

Locus of Control: Chance is administered here as one of the International Personality Item Pool's single-construct scales: original public-domain items catalogued at ipip.ori.org (Goldberg, 1999) and keyed to one specific individual-differences construct, rather than belonging to a broad multi-factor inventory. This form presents 10 items rated on a 5-point scale; responses are summed in the keyed direction after any reverse-worded items are recoded.

The construct label and item membership follow the IPIP catalog directly. Because this exact public-domain item set is what is administered, the standings shown in the norms section are computed on this form itself (see the cited reference-sample note), not borrowed from any other instrument.

The notes below are reproduced from the platform's psychometrics register for this instrument — the same source-cited reliability, validity, and norms text that accompanies its downloadable report.

IPIP-based chance locus of control scale; reliability estimates for this exact 10-item public-domain operationalization are not available from a single published validation study.

Chance external locus — belief that outcomes are determined by luck or fate — is associated with fatalism, reduced health behaviors, and lower motivation for goal-directed effort (Levenson, 1974).

Scores are expressed as percent-of-maximum on the 1–5 accuracy scale using Higher/Average/Lower bands. No published normative tables exist for this specific IPIP operationalization.

“Believe that unfortunate events occur because of bad luck.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.

International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org).