Few existing measures of need for achievement are suitable for use on British managerial populations. This is because most scales fail on one or more of four criteria of acceptability: managerial standardization, industrial acceptability, control for social desirability and faking responses, and psychometric adequacy. The construction of an achievement motive measure, the Work Preference Questionnaire (WPQ), is described, which attempts to meet these criteria. The scale is in forced‐choice format comprising 24 pairs of statements each pair matched for social desirability, and logically related. The items are written in terms of hypothetical boss and organizational practices which have been chosen to represent various aspects of achievement motive theory and research findings. The WPQ shows satisfactory internal consistency on two managerial populations, and fairly good stability over a 12‐month period. There is no correlation with age. Concurrent, construct and criterion validity findings are presented, and also evidence of the scale's resistance to social desirability and faking influen