Measuring personality traits in the classroom

Abstract

In this article, a personality model for the description of children's classroom behaviour is the main focus of interest. It is questioned whether the Five-Factor Personality Model can be used as an organizational structure for the description of personality characteristics in the ®eld of educational practice. Two groups of Dutch school children (N 1296 and N 367), 4±12 years old, were rated by their teachers on scales of the School Behaviour Checklist±Revised (SCHOBL-R 1 ). Analysis of the scales produced four meaningful and identical components in both samples: Extraversion, Attitude towards School Work, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. The factorial structure of the scales remained stable over age as well as sex. Boys and girls were rated by their teachers as having dierent attitudes towards school work, and as diering on emotional stability and agreeableness. The items of the school behaviour checklist were then analysed in the context of other personality scales, leading to the conclusion that the four scales of the SCHOBL-R can be interpreted in terms of four of the ®ve personality dimensions of the Five-Factor Model. The strong relationship between the contents of the dierent scales used in this analysis supports the idea that the Five (Four) Factor Model is a valid model for the description of individual dierences in Dutch school children.

The Combined Effect of Big 5 Personality Traits on Fourth-Graders´ Math Performance

“…Despite the fact that the questionnaire items use other personality scales, the authors concluded it is possible to interpret the four factors found with SCHOBL-R in terms of four of the five personality dimensions of the Big Five Model. This finding supports the idea that Big 5 is plausible in Dutch schoolchildren of these ages [24].…”

Factor Structure Invariance in the Children's Big Five Questionnaire

“…The five-factor invariance structure found in this paper provides partial support for studies that have reported this structure for children of different age and gender through self-report questionnaires (e.g., Barbaranelli et al, 2003;Costa & McCrae, 1994;Goldberg, 2001;Markey et al, 2002;Resin et al, 1999): The structure of personality was found to be invariant across age and gender when focusing on the number of factors and the equivalence of the item scores on each dimension, but not when focusing on theoretical constructs. The theoretical constructs were invariant across gender but not across age.…”

The impact on socio-emotional development and quality of life of language impairment in 8-year-old children

“…The items are grouped into four factor scales (Extraversion, Attitude to School Work, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability), with high reliability (internal consistency; Cronbach’s alpha 0.95–0.88). The SCHOBL‐R produced the same 4 factor structure across ages, in Russian, American and Dutch children, and over time periods, explaining 50% of the variance 20 . Each value of the sum score on the factor scales corresponds to a standardized score, separately for males and females, 31 ranging from 1 to 19 with mean equals 10 and standard deviation (SD) equals 3.…”

“…Obviously, for diagnosis and treatment purposes for individual children, clinical assessments are required. However, given the objective of this study, these measures are appropriate as they have been found to provide reliable and valid estimates for use, at least, at group level 2,20,26,30,31 . Socio‐emotional development was measured by the SCHOBL‐R, focussing on ‘normal’ individual differences in classroom behaviour.…”

“…However, given the objective of this study, these measures are appropriate as they have been found to provide reliable and valid estimates for use, at least, at group level. 2,20,26,30,31 Socio-emotional development was measured by the SCHOBL-R, focussing on 'normal' individual differences in classroom behaviour. Another, well-known, measure for socio-emotional development is the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) 37 focussing on 'extremely' deviant behaviour, 'such as conduct behaviour and ADHD'.…”