PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT INITIATIVE: NEO USER-GROUP
MINUTES OF THE THIRD MEETING OF THE NEO USER GROUP
HELD ON 6 JUNE 2000 AT 10 WALLACE STREET, WAVERLEY FROM 8H30 - 11H00
1. Present and Apologies
1.1 Present:
Dr Deon de Bruin (presenter), Sheena Worwood, Yaseena
Amod, Lynn Ribton-Turner, Theresa Cotterrell, Inette Taylor
1.2 Apologies:
Andrew Thatcher
2. "Personality traits are important but not enough" by
Dr Deon De Bruin
Dr De Bruin entitled his presentation "Personality traits
are important but not enough" (a titled which he said he "borrowed"). He
explained that his interest in personality traits are more basic and research
orientated than applied. He gave background of how his PhD study through
RAU got him interested in how Comrey used factor analysis to develop personality
scales (similar to the NEO). Dr de Bruin was impressed with the psychometric
properties of the Comrey and even consulted with professor Comrey in the
USA. This resulted in his doctorate on the structure and validity of the
Comrey for an Afrikaans speaking student population. He found strong
evidence that the Comrey questionnaire measured similar
constructs in the Afrikaans and American groups.
Dr de Bruin's doctorate included an extensive literature survey of McCrae and Costa's trait theory on which their personality inventory ( NEO PI-R; NEO FFI) is based.
Dr de Bruin came to the conclusion that traits are important but not enough. The NEO can help predict behaviour with some degree of accuracy, it has reasonably high validity coefficients but it is also limited. While the questionnaire helps the practitioner to understand what a person has i.t.o. personality it only gives a broad picture. To really get to know a person one would need finer nuances such as motives, interests, psychological defences and these are not measured by the NEO. Questionnaires like the NEO (including for example the 16PF) can never, according to Dr de Bruin, tell a person's identity or core aspects of a person's personality.
Positive attributes of traits (personality factors of the NEO) which Dr de Bruin referred to are that they are found to be genetic and biologically based, they are stable over time, replicable, and factors have shown to have important consequences for real life behaviour. Dr de Bruin explained that from a scientific point of view it is important to have the reference of five basic factors as a map with which to understand personality. No map represents the territory accurately. From a construct point of view these factors can be described as plots in space and these five factors in space represent the basic dimensions of personality.
Dr de Bruin cautioned against the "Jingle-Jangle" fallacy
where terms with similar names can be mistaken to have similar meanings
which is not the case (e.g. Extroversion in the NEO is not entirely the
same construct as Extroversion in many other personality questionnaires).
Dr de Bruin pointed out that As McCrae and Costa also
indicated, confirmatory factor analysis has proven to be unsuccessful for
the NEO. He stated that with the Comrey however, confirmatory factor analysis
of scales in the South African context showed a reasonably good fit with
USA data. There is thus strong support that the same things are measured
here and in the USA. Dr de Bruin referred to other research on the Comrey
that involved an investigation with policemen and Posttraumatic stress
disorder where a discriminant analysis with the Comrey and an interview
schedule revealed interesting factors which contribute to the likelihood
of policemen developing PSTD (e.g. high orderliness, conscientiousness,introversion
- introverts are apparently less likely to seek social support - emotional
stability). He mentioned that the Comrey can be seen as a more sophisticated
scale than the NEO (seven point scale) and it would thus not be appropriate
for subjects with poor education.
Dr de Bruin concluded that the integration of personality traits cannot be reflected adequately by questionnaires such as the NEO or the 16PF, and stated that practitioners need to have a good understanding of the theories on which the personality questionnaires they use are based on.
Mrs Taylor briefly referred to her doctoral research findings on the NEO where Openness to experience did not emerge as a factor on her black sample after doing a Procrustes targeted rotation.
Some discussion followed on the current legislation concerning psychometric tests. When asked for his opinion about which personality tests could be "safe" to use at present Dr de Bruin suggested that recent research on the OPQ (of which he did not have much detail) might be useful to follow up on. Dr de Bruin admitted that he would personally use the second order factors of the 16PF92 on which recent extensive research was published by Rene van Eeden.
4. Next and Future meetings
At this stage no dates for future meetings of the NEO user-group have been set. Interest in and attendance to the NEO user-groups have been fairly limited and the possibility of extending the user group to a more general discussion group on personality/psychometric tests in industry is being considered.
MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS:
1. Minutes of the first NEO User
Group meeting 3/02/2000
2. Minutes of the second NEO
User Group meeting