Longitudinal Associations Between Personality Profile Stability and Adjustment in College Students: Distinguishing Among Overall Stability,Distinctive Stability,and Within‐Time Normativeness

ABSTRACT In the present study, longitudinal associations of 3 aspects of personality profile stability (i.e., overall stability, distinctive stability, and within‐time normativeness) with 3 adjustment measures (i.e., depressive symptoms, self‐esteem, and delinquency) were examined, using 4 waves of longitudinal data on a Belgian college sample (N=565). Longitudinal path models revealed strong longitudinal associations between adjustment and overall stability. Subsequent analyses showed that it is not the degree to which one's personality profile consistently diverges from the average personality profile within a population (i.e., distinctive stability) that is related to adjustment but the degree to which a personality profile of an individual matches the average personality profile within the sample at a certain point in time (i.e., within‐time normativeness). The current study thereby underscores the importance of distinguishing normativeness and distinctiveness when examining personality profile stability.     

Web‐based Multisource Reference Checking: An investigation of psychometric integrity and applied benefits

Reference checking is a near‐universal practice within personnel selection systems, and legal pressures to gather job‐relevant and structured feedback from references is mounting. Despite this state of affairs, reference checking is a woefully under‐researched method for obtaining psychometrically sound and behaviorally informative data that predict task, team, and leadership behavior at work. From studies of job candidates in applied settings, this article reports on the reliability, validity, and compliance of multisource reference feedback gathered using a web‐based methodology. Acceptable levels of internal consistency, inter‐rater reliability, and test–retest reliability of the reference‐checking instrument were realized. Results of survival analyses found support for prediction of involuntary, but not voluntary turnover. No practically significant differences were found in overall mean scores across demographic subgroups. Finally, the web‐based reference‐checking system evinced high degrees of efficiencies across a range of metrics (e.g., reference response time, reference response rate, candidate response time).     

Intentional Objects,Pretence, and the Quasi-Relational Nature of Mental Phenomena: A New Look at Brentano on Intentionality

Abstract

Brentano famously changed his mind about intentionality between the 1874 and 1911 editions of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (PES). The 1911 edition repudiates the 1874 view that to think about something is to stand in a relation to something that is within in the mind, and holds instead that intentionality is only like a relation (it is ‘quasi-relational’). Despite this, Brentano still insists that mental activity involves ‘the reference to something as an object’, much as he did in the 1874 edition of PES. The question is what Brentano might have meant by this, given that he rejects a relational account of intentionality. The present paper suggests an answer. It draws on recent work on pretence theory to provide a model of Brentano’s notion of the quasi-relational nature of mental phenomena, as well as of the notion of mental reference to an object, and argues that the model helps to explain why Brentano might have been able discern a clear continuity between the views of the 1874 and 1911 editions of PES, despite the differences.     

Putting the accreditation cart before the aaasp horse: A reply to silva,conroy and zizzi

Abstract

While Silva et al. (1999) must be congratulated for leading a discussion of accreditation of graduate programs in applied sport psychology, the authors appear to have “put the cart before the horse.” They have adopted an extreme one-sided position that suggests that accreditation of programs is the only viable solution for some of the training and employment problems that currently exist in the applied sport psychology profession. This response questions some of their assumptions and conclusions and offers several alternative solutions to these problems in a more balanced analysis of the current situation. It is hoped that these articles will stimulate further discussion at AAASP meetings and among practicing professionals.     

Item grouping and item randomization in personality measurement

This paper describes a study examining the impact of item order in personality measurement on reliability, measurement equivalence and scale-level correlations. A large sample of university students completed one of three forms of the International Personality Item Pool version of the Big Five personality inventory: items sorted at random, items sorted by factor, and items cycled through factors. Results showed that the underlying measurement model and the internal consistency of the IPIP-Big Five scale was unaffected by differences in item order. Also, most of the scale-level correlations among factors were not significantly different across forms. Implications for the administration of tests and interpretation of test scores are discussed, and future research directions are offered.     

The Multitasking Preference Inventory: Toward an Improved Measure of Individual Differences in Polychronicity

This article describes the initial development of a new measure of individual polychronicity, a construct indicating a preference for multitasking as opposed to performing only one task at a time. Following a brief review of past definitional issues, a revised definition is offered and a new measure of polychronicity—the Multitasking Preference Inventory (MPI)—is created based on this definition. Three studies describe the creation, pilot testing, and psychometric refinement of an initial pool of items (Study 1); a convergent and discriminant validity analysis (Study 2); and initial findings with respect to the criterion-related validity of scores on the MPI (Study 3). Together, these findings provide preliminary evidence for the reliability of scores on the MPI and the validity of the MPI in predicting variables relevant to multitasking.