Cubiks assessment reliability and validity series V Investigating the relationship between PAPI-N and the lexical Big Five personality factors

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1 Cubiks assessment reliability and validity series V06.14 Investigating the relationship between PAPI-N and the lexical Big Five personality factors Date of study June - August 2006 Industry sector: Occupational group: Telecommunication and Business Services Management and Administration Sample size: 65 Assessment tools: PAPI, TDA-100

2 Introduction This research was a construct validity study, conducted in order to explore the relationship between PAPI (Personality and Preference Inventory), Cubiks measure of personality at work, and the Trait Descriptive Adjectives (TDA-100) developed by Goldberg (1992), a measure of the Big Five personality factors. The TDA was created using the lexical hypothesis approach, whereby personality vocabulary is selected from words already present in the dictionary. The inventory consists of 20 descriptors for each of the five factors; Surgency (often referred to as Extraversion), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect (often referred to as Openness to Experience) Method Assessment Measures The normative version of the Personality and Preference Inventory (PAPI-N) was used for this study. The TDA-100 measure consists of 100 unipolar trait descriptive adjectives and participants have to rate how accurately each descriptor describes themselves on a ninepoint scale, where 1 = extremely inaccurate, 5 = neither accurate nor inaccurate and 9 = extremely accurate. Administration Respondents were ed the TDA-100 assessment and asked to complete PAPI-N via the Cubiks Online assessment platform. The measures were completed voluntarily and in the respondents own time. Sample A sample of 65 employees (21 male and 44 female) aged between 20 and 60 (mean = 37.46, standard deviation = 11.03), from two organisations within the telecommunication and business services sectors took part in the study. Employees occupations ranged from management to administrative, office-based positions. Results To investigate the relationship between the PAPI-N and the TDA-100, Pearson s correlations were calculated. Significant relationships between each PAPI scale and the TDA-100 scales are reported in Table 1. The correlations in bold in the table indicate where a conceptual link between PAPI and the Big Five was hypothesised in the PAPI User Guide (Cubiks, 2000). Note that PAPI was not hypothesised to directly correlate with the Emotional Stability factor in the Big Five taxonomy.

3 Table 1: Correlations between PAPI and the TDA-100 (N=65) Table 1 above illustrates there are a large number of correlations between the PAPI and TDA scales, showing that there is a considerable relationship between PAPI and the TDA Ten out of the thirteen hypothesised links between PAPI scales and the TDA-100 scales showed significant correlations, with seven correlating at or above a 0.01 level of significance. Two PAPI scales, Need to be Forceful (K) and Emotional Restraint (E) were hypothesised to correlate with TDA Agreeableness, but did not in this research. A significant relationship between PAPI Need to Belong to Groups (B) and TDA Surgency was also not found in this research.

4 In addition to the hypothesised links, 9 further correlations were found between PAPI scales and TDA Surgency, 3 more correlations between PAPI scales and TDA Agreeableness, 3 additional correlations with TDA Conscientiousness and 9 other correlations between PAPI scales and TDA Intellect. Multiple correlations for the Big Five Factors ranged between.70 (with TDA Surgency and TDA Agreeableness) and 0.75 (with TDA Intellect), with the exception TDA Emotional Stability, where the correlation with PAPI was TDA Surgency correlated highly with PAPI scale Need to be Noticed (X), which alone accounted for 43% of the variance in this factor. PAPI scale Social Harmoniser (S) also correlated highly with TDA Surgency and accounted for an additional 5% of the variance. PAPI scale Social Harmoniser (S) also accounted for a large amount of variance (21.6%) within the TDA Agreeableness factor. TDA Conscientiousness had a multiple correlation of 0.74, with much of the variance accounted for by PAPI scales Organised Type (C) and Attention to Detail (D). Additional scales correlated at or above a.01 level of significance with TDA Conscientiousness, but did not account for any additional variance. These scales include Integrative Planner (H), Need to Finish a Task (N), Need to be Noticed (X) and Role of the Hard Worker (G). TDA Intellect had the largest multiple correlation with PAPI, with PAPI scale Conceptual Thinker (R) accounting for the variance within this factor. TDA Emotional stability had the lowest multiple correlation. However, as PAPI does not have scales that measure anxiety or neuroticism, it was not expected to relate directly to TDA Emotional Stability. Despite this, PAPI does appear to tap in to some elements of this factor with three scales, Need to Relate Closely to Others (O), Emotional Restraint (E) and Role of the Hard Worker (G) all correlating with TDA Emotional Stability. Comparison of the correlations between PAPI and the TDA-100 and NEO-FFI assessments For interest the correlations found in this research were compared to those found between PAPI and another Big Five measure, the NEO-FFI. Table 2 highlights significant correlations between the PAPI scales and each Big Five factor, as measured by the TDA- 100 and NEO-FFI. The Big Five factors are shown in the table as Surgency (S) (referred to as Extraversion in the NEO-FFI), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), Emotional Stability (ES) (referred to as Neuroticism in the NEO-FFI) and Intellect (I) (referred to as Openness to Experience in the NEO-FFI). Table 2 reveals that there are similarities between the PAPI factors which correlate with the TDA scales, and those which correlate with the NEO-FFI scales. 38 significant correlations were found between the PAPI scales and the TDA. In comparison 44 significant relationships were found between PAPI scales and the NEO-FFI. Of these correlations, 22 overlapped with a single PAPI scale correlated with both measures of a particular Big Five factor.

5 Table 2: Correlations between PAPI and the TDA-100 (N=65) The PAPI scales of Need to be Noticed (X), Social Harmoniser (S) and Need to Relate Closely to Others (O) which would be expected to relate to Surgency/ Extraversion, correlated with this scale for both the TDA and NEO-FFI. Need to Belong to Groups (B) was the only PAPI scale which did not correlate with both Surgency/Extraversion scales and would have been expected to. Additionally a number of other PAPI scales correlated with TDA Surgency, but not with NEO-FFI Extraversion. A similar pattern was found for the relationships between PAPI scales and the TDA Intellect and NEO-FFI Openness to Experience factor. Two of the three PAPI scales that were hypothesised to relate to the TDA Intellect and NEO-FFI Openness to Experience scales, were found to correlate. However a number of other PAPI scales correlated with the TDA

6 Intellect scale, but not to the corresponding scale on the NEO-FFI. The hypothesised links were between the PAPI scales Conceptual Thinker (R), Need for Change (Z) and Need to Finish a Task (N), with the last of these only correlating with the TDA measure. For the Big Five factor of Agreeableness, only the NEO-FFI correlated with the expected PAPI Scales Need to be Forceful (K) and Emotional Restraint (E). The TDA Agreeableness scale did not relate to either. Only 3 PAPI scales correlated with TDA Agreeableness in comparison to 11 with NEO-FFI Agreeableness. Four PAPI scales are hypothesised to link with the Big Five factor of Conscientiousness; Organised Type (C), Integrative Planner (H), Attention to Detail (D) and Need for Rules and Supervision (W). These hypotheses were all proved correct as all four PAPI scales were found to relate to both the TDA and NEO-FFI Conscientiousness scale. Lastly, Emotional Stability was not hypothesised to link to any PAPI scales, as the PAPI questionnaire does not directly tap in to this Big Five factor. However, both the TDA Emotional Stability and NEO-FFI Neuroticism scale correlated with the following PAPI scales: Need to relate closely to individuals (O) and Emotional Restraint (E). This suggests that PAPI indirectly taps in this Big Five dimension. Review This research has highlighted that there are a number of relationships between PAPI and the TDA, suggesting that PAPI taps in to a number of the Big Five scales. It should be noted that a perfect relationship would not be expected as PAPI is explicitly an assessment of personality in the work context, whereas the TDA is a general personality measure. Additionally, this research shows that there is some overlap between the PAPI scales that correlate with the TDA scales and those which correlate with the NEO-FFI scales. This overlap demonstrates some consistent findings for the relationship between PAPI and the Big Five, across two well established measures of the Big Five factors. It should be highlighted that the sample used in these studies is fairly small in size and ideally a replication should be made using larger numbers of participants. Nonetheless, these exploratory studies provide some indication of the relationship between PAPI and the Big Five. Cubiks would like to thank Sarah-Jayne Groves for her contribution to this research. References Cubiks (2005). PAPI-N Norm supplement (United Kingdom). London, Cubiks. Goldberg, L. R (1992). The Development of Markers for the Big-Five Factor Structure. Psychological Assessment, 92, Cubiks Ranger House, Walnut Tree Close, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 4UL ; T F E info@cubiks.com W Cubiks is an international assessment and development consultancy with offices throughout Europe (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK), regional offices (Dubai, Malaysia and the USA), licensed distributor operations (India, New Zealand, People s Republic of China, Poland and Spain) and an international network of delivery partners. All rights reserved Cubiks Intellectual Property Limited 2012