IDS Publishing Corporation completed a re-norming of the Reiss Motivation Profile® in November 2017. The initiative was led by IDS’s Vice President, Michael Reiss, and was certified by independent statistician, William Aflleje.
The Reiss Motivation Profile® identifies 16 life motives or basic desires, which are goals common to everyone. Everyone is motivated by these 16 basic desires, but individuals prioritize them differently. How an individual prioritizes the basic desires determines the person’s values, influences the development of personality traits, and predicts his or her behavior in real-life contexts.
The RMP’s initial norms from 2007 included 7,800 respondents, while a re-norming completed in 2012 was comprised of about 45,000 respondents. This second re-norming of the RMP is based on data collected between 2007 and 2017 on 79,888 respondents from 23 countries across three continents (Asia, Europe, North America).
Seven countries had enough test takers to allow the creation of statistically valid norms: Austria, Curacao, Finland, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, and the USA. In addition, a Dutch norm was calculated based on respondents from both Belgium and the Netherlands, and a Nordic norm was calculated based on test takers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
The database of nearly 80,000 respondents was comprised of 57 percent men and 43 percent women. An analysis of possible gender differences showed that men and women share similar motivational profiles for Family and Honor. Slight differences were noted for the basic desires of Curiosity, Eating, Independence, Social Contact, Status, Tranquility, and Vengeance. Larger differences were found on the remaining motives: Acceptance and Beauty are more important motives for women, whereas Physical Activity, Power, and Romance are more important motives for men. Given these findings, the decision was made to create separate gender norms.
In summary, the current norms are based on 79,888 respondents who completed the RMP between 2007 and 2017. Statistical analysis of the data revealed differences across gender and country. Thus, separate norms were created for men and women, and separate norms were created for countries and territories with sufficient numbers of test takers.