A factor analytic study of teachers' ratings of the personality of school children

Teachers' rating on 70 adjectives that described the personality of school children were factor analysed. Four main factors emerged, and the adjectives loading most highly on each were selected to form four subscales of a New Teachers Rating Scale (NTRS). The subscales were named Good Pupil, Extraversion, Psychoticism and Neuroticism. Normative data for the scale were reported. Correlations with self-rated personality inventories such as the JEPQ, JEPI and CPQ indicated that: the Extraversion subscale correlated with JEPI-E and CPQ-Exvia, the Psychoticism subscale correlated with EPQ-P, CPQ-Exvia and CPQ-Anxiety, while the Good Pupil subscale correlated positively with JEPI-E, and negatively with JEPQ-P and CPQ-Anxiety. The Neuroticism subscale did not correspond to Eysenck's measures of Neuroticism but correlated with CPQ-Anxiety. Test-retest reliability of the subscales ranged between 0.75 and 0.92. The usefulness of the NTRS in complementing self-rated personality measures and the need to explore the nature of self-rated and teacher-rated neuroticism were discussed.