The Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale: A meta-analytic examination of item convergent and discriminant validity.

The Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale (NGS; Rosenthal et al., 2020) is a 16-item adjective-rating scale with scores that measure narcissistic grandiosity, a central feature of the grandiose form of narcissism. The NGS was developed both to measure the narcissistic grandiosity construct and to do so in a way that maximally distinguishes narcissistic grandiosity from nongrandiose self-esteem, a construct with which narcissistic grandiosity is often conflated. Over the past few years, different shortened versions of the NGS have been recommended in the literature. To evaluate these shortened versions, we used a meta-analysis to assess how well scores on each NGS item measured narcissistic grandiosity and distinguished it from self-esteem. Using zero-order and partial correlations from 40 data sets, which included information from 14,938 individual participants, we found that all NGS items correlated moderately with grandiose narcissism and largely retained those relations when controlling for self-esteem as well as narcissistic entitlement. The results help inform researchers about the degree to which items recommended for shorter versions of the NGS meet the scale's theoretical goals. We conclude that, when possible, it is advantageous for researchers to continue to use the full 16-item version of the scale. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).