Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2001

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

John W. Lounsbury

Committee Members

Sundstrom, Michael Johnson

Abstract

In light of recent research supporting the use of personality measures to predict job performance and in view of the paucity of research on personality predictors of success for temporary employees, the current study investigated the use of personality measures with industrial temporary employees. Through job analysis, two personality factors emerged that may serve as predictors of success for industrial temporary workers: Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. A work-contextualized personality measure, the Temporary Employee Inventory (TEI), was created to measure these personality dimensions. In a predictive validation study, the TEI was administered to 67 industrial temporary employees and was correlated with supervisor ratings of job performance. The TEI demonstrated a correlation with overall job performance (r.30, p<.05). The individual scale of Conscientiousness also correlated significantly with overall job performance (r=.32, p<.05) and displayed significant correlations with all dimensions of job performance except "Relations With Others." While the individual scale of Agreeableness yielded non-zero correlations with overall job performance and with all dimensions of job performance, these correlations were not statistically significant at the .05 level. This study supports prior research that has found personality to be a modest predictor of job performance and has added to the current body of research by exploring the use of personality measures in the context of temporary employment. This study's findings are preliminary in nature and more research is needed in order to reach more sound conclusions with regard to the use of personality assessment to predict the job performance of industrial temporary employees.

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