Demographic and Individual Correlates of Self-Rated Competency

Abstract

This study was designed to explore sex, age, and personality differences in the way working people rated their own work competencies. A total of 723 working adults (mainly from Europe and the Middle East) completed a questionnaire which measured respondents self-assessed work competencies, self-rated intelligence, creativity, humor and ability to learn, core selfevaluations, and Big Five personality traits. Males rated themselves significantly higher than females on four competencies (Leading and Deciding; Analyzing and Interpreting, Creating and Conceptualizing; and Enterprising and Performing). Factor analysis revealed one overall factor. Regressing the total competency rating onto demography (age and sex), core selfevaluations, and the Big Five showed a clear interpretable pattern. Older, stable, open, conscientious, extraverts tended to rate themselves highest on overall competency. Extraverted males rated their creativity and sense of humor highest. Core self-evaluations added little incremental validity over the Big Five. Personal ratings of competence are a function of sex and personality which may systematically relate to actual competency behaviors.That is individual differences predict both self-ratings and actual behavior which are related. Using personal ratings of work behavior in appraisal procedures may be contaminated by humility and hubris effects associated with sex and personality. The first to explore self-ratings of the "Great Eight" competencies and to examine how individual differences influence selfperceptions of leadership competencies.

Self-assessments of creativity: Not ideal, but better than you think.

“…Furnham (2001) used a more nuanced way of assessing a construct in one item, which was to present participants with a bell curve and ask them to estimate their own IQ. This method has also been used for creativity (Furnham, Miller, Batey, & Johnson, 2012; Ivcevic & Kaufman, 2013).…”

The Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale: Turkish Validation and Relationship to Academic Major

“…Although some evaluation-based self-assessments are domain-general (e.g., Furnham, Miller, Batey & Johnson, 2011), many are domain-specific and ask questions about people's creativity in specific areas. One commonly used measure is the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS; Kaufman, 2012), which represents an evolution of several earlier measures of creativity across different domains (e.g., Kaufman, 2006;Kaufman & Baer, 2004;Kaufman, Waterstreet, et al, 2009).…”