What Can Personality and Motivation Source Trait Measurements Add to the Prediction of School Achievement?

Abstract

SUMMARY.Intelligence (fluid-culture fair, and crystallized-traditional tests), fourteen primary personality factors (on the HSPQ), and fifteen dynamic structure factors (on the School Motivation Analysis Test), were measured on five samples of seventh and eighth grade children (Total N=563) involving (with the achievement test), eight hours of testing.Each of the three modalities of predictor accounted for about a third of the criterion variance, and since each has its own space, they together accounted for almost three-quarters of the observable variance, leaving one-quarter for environmental influences and accidents outside the child. The nature of the personality and motivation correlations, e.g., positive relations with super ego and self sentinlent factors, negatively with sensuality and pugnacity ergs, fits general motivation theory. Counsellers could thus increase predictive power by adding personality and motivation measures to the current ability tests. I.-CONCEFTS AND INSTRUMENTS FOR PERSONALITY-MOTIVATION MEASUREMENT.THE first half of this century saw a remarkable growth in the systematic understanding of human abilities, and of their predictive relation to various kinds of achievement. It produced a technology of scholastic measurement in which many thousands of specialists are now engaged and which has greatly increased the success of pupil placement, of remedial work with backward individuals, and of adaptation of curricula. It may well be that the second half will be a parallel development in the use of measures of personality and motivation in predicting and understanding achievement.The basic problem is the lack of valid and meaningful measures of personality and motivational variables. I t is possible to start with reasonably reliable scales measuring variables thought to be relevant in a particular situation. However, it will be difficult to interpret predictions of criteria, such as school achievement, obtained in this way unless the validity of the test is fully established, i.e., unless we know what the scale measures, and how this variable relates to other known variables. Such information is best obtained from comprehensive and systematic factorial studies of the structure of human personality and motivation, much in the way that Burt, Vernon, Thurstone and Guildford have studied human abilities.In the last decade, basic factor analytic research on general personality and motivation structure has reached a degree of stability of replication which has justified setting up personality scales in terms of the objective tests (the 0-A Batteries : Cattell, 1955) and questionnaires. The published versions of the latter at present available are : the High School Personality Questionnaire * The research reported therein was carried out through the co-operative research program of the Office ot Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. 280

Analysis of personality traits and academic performance in higher education at a Colombian university

“…Also results are obtained that do not defer significantly in statistical terms between the possible combinations when combining the contributions to the variance in the measurement of two of the three of them. ( Cattell et al., 1966 , p. 36). It is worth adding that Cattell continued his study mostly with children between ages of 12 and 14.…”

Personality and Academic Attainment*

“…The use of many more traits might, nevertheless, make the possibility of high multiple correlations more likely. Cattell, Sealy and Sweney (1966) maintain that up to 25 per cent of the variance in school attainment may be attributable to the effects of personality. This suggestion is, however, speculative as it was based on correlations corrected for the effects of unreliability in the measures.…”

A Study of The Academic Achievement and Self-Concept of Male and Female Hearing-Impaired Students in Nigeria

“…Thus, the correlations either of achievement or of achievement discrepancy scores with measures of emotional stability or neuroticism, positive or negative self-concept, anxiety, aggression and introversion have earlier been confirmed. (Cattell, 1966;Entiwistle & Entiwistle, 1970).…”