An investigation into the first-order factor structure of the personality and preference inventory-normative (PAPI-N) on a relatively large sample of the South African population.

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Organisations in a free market economy exist with the purpose to serve and provide the marketwith products and services that the market values while at the same time satisfying the triplebottom line of profit, people and planet. The extent to which an organisation will succeed in thisaim, however, depends to a large extent on the calibre of its workforce. Human resourcemanagement represents a range of interventions with the purpose of contributing to anorganisation's success, through the acquisition and maintenance of a high quality and competentwork force, as well as to ensure the effective and efficient use of human talent in a manner thatwill add value to an organisation. Personnel selection represents one of these human resourcefunctions and thereby constitutes a critical human resource management intervention in as far asit attempts to regulate human capital movement into, through and out of the organisation withthe expectation that this will result in increased employee job performance. Industrialorganisationalpsychologists and human resources practitioners frequently usepsychometric/psychological tests in the selection process, which provide them with objectiveinformation on complex constructs such as intellectual ability or personality, that arehypothesised to be determinants of the level of job performance that selected applicants willachieve. Accurate predictions can however, only be derived from measures of suchpsychometric/psychological tests if the constructs they attempt to measure are in factdeterminants of job performance, if the tests provide reliable, valid and unbiased measures ofthese constructs and the nature of the relationship between the predictor constructs and thecriterion construct is validly understood. Personality represents an influential determinant of jobperformance. The Personality and Preference Inventory-Normative (PAPI-N) is a personalityquestionnaire that is widely used in industry. This provides the essential justification for theprimary objective of this research, which was to evaluate the first-order factor structure of thePAPI-N through a factor analytic investigation on a relatively large sample of the South Africanworking population.The data used in this study was obtained from the data archives of Cubiks (Pty) Ltd, with writtenpermission from the intellectual property holder, to utilise the sample data for the purpose of thisresearch. The South African PAPI-N database comprised all respondents who were assessed byWork Dynamics, the official distributor of Cubiks's products and services in South Africa, in theperiod 2007 to 2012. Item and dimensionality analyses were performed on the 20 subscales ofthe PAPI-N as well as the Social Desirability scale. This was done to assess the success with which the subscales represented the underlying personality constructs. The results in the itemanalysis revealed that in about 50% of the PAPI-N subscales concern arose about the extent towhich the items of the subscales responded in unison to systematic differences in a singleunderlying latent variable. Results from the dimensionality analysis showed that 12 of the 20personality dimension measures were compatible with the position that the items comprisingthese subscales measure what they are designed to measure. In contrast, eight out of the 20subscales failed the uni-dimensionality test.A spectrum of goodness-of-fit statistics was used to evaluate the measurement model fit. Themeasurement model's overall fit was acceptable. The null hypothesis of exact fit was rejectedbut the null hypothesis of close fit could not be rejected (p>.05). The fit indices reflected a closefit in the parameter and a very good model fit in the sample. Although the measurement modelfitted the data closely, the factor loadings (although statistically significant) were generally of amoderate degree. Approximately twenty-eight percent (27.78%) of the completely standardisedfactor loadings fell below the critical cut-off value of .50. This would suggest that the individualitems generally (72.22%) do represent the latent personality dimensions they were designed toreflect acceptably well, but that in a little bit more than a quarter of the items, less than 25% ofthe variance in the item responses was due to variance in the latent variable it was designed toreflect. Discriminant validity was also investigated. The results showed that PAPI-N, althoughwith some difficulty, permit the successful discrimination between the unique aspects of thelatent personality dimensions.The results of the confirmatory factor analyses suggests that while the intention of the PAPI-N tohave sets of items reflecting specific primary personality factors succeeded, the subscale itemmeasures mostly hold a sizable amount of systematic and random error. Based on the abovefindings, this personality measure should be used with caution in personnel selection in SouthAfrica. Nevertheless, this study serves to extend the understanding of the psychometricproperties of the PAPI-N on samples different from the UK sample on which it was originallydeveloped and standardised. Its findings should assist in eliciting the necessary further researchneeded to establish the psychometric credentials of the PAPI-N as a valuable assessmentinstrument in South Africa with confidence. Recommendations for future research are made.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University