3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Adapting the NEO-PI-3 for a South African context : a pilot study using a South African student population.(2011-05-13) Quy, G. S.The trait approach to personality is one of the most influential epistemological frameworks in personality psychology and underlies the development of most objective personality inventories. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) is amongst the most widely used operationalisations of the FFM within personality assessment (Costa and McCrae, 1992). However, recent research (Franklin, 2009; Laher, 2010) suggests that the NEO-PI-R is not wholly applicable within the South African context; as there may be inappropriate items contained within the inventory, both linguistically and culturally. Within the United States, McCrae, Costa and Martin (2004) identified the NEO-PI-R as having specific problematic items, and developed the NEO-PI-3 as a revised “more readable” version of the NEO-PI-R. Thirty-seven items were changed from the original 240 items in the NEO-PI-R to create the NEO-PI-3. However, the modifications made to the NEO-PI-3 did not address all the issues pertinent within the NEO-PI-R from a South African perspective as evidenced in Laher’s (2010) and Franklin’s (2009) studies. This study adapted the NEO-PI-3 by changing specific items informed through Franklin (2009) and Laher’s (2010) research, as well as research conducted within this study on two samples of university lectures at the University of the Witwatersrand. Forty-nine items were changed from the original 240 NEO-PI-R items, retaining 30 items changed from the NEO-PI-3, and preferring 3 of the original NEO-PI-R items to the NEO-PI-3 items. These changes were aimed at making the NEO-PI-3 a more appropriate and applicable instrument both culturally and linguistically within the South African context. This modified inventory was then administered to 175 students at the University of the Witwatersrand to test the inventory’s validity and reliability. The reliability of this modified inventory was assessed through conducting an internal consistency analysis generating alpha coefficients indicating that the inventory was indeed reliable. The construct validity of this modified inventory was assessed through an exploratory factor analysis where five factors did emerge from the analysis; concomitant with the theoretical basis of the FFM. Based on feedback from the participants, both quantitatively and qualitatively, recommendations for future research and further problematic items are identified and discussed. In terms of the reliability of the modified version of the NEO-PI-3, internal consistency coefficients produced within the study suggested that the instrument is reliable, producing moderate to good alpha values, as well as producing evidence of good construct validity. Only 17 items emerged as still being potentially problematic within the modified version of the NEO-PI-3.Item Exploring language bias in the NEO-PI-R(2010-03-08T06:49:14Z) Franklin, Dee RossThe study explores language bias in the NEO-PI-R both quantitatively and qualitatively. A sample of 28 postgraduate psychology student volunteers completed a questionnaire containing the NEO-PI-R and two open-ended questions about the instrument. These responses were then analysed across English first language and second language speakers to explore issues of bias. Reliability of the NEO-PI-R appeared to be robust at a domain level. The reliability of the facets, while appropriate for the most part, still yielded low alpha coefficients for the Excitement-seeking, Actions, Values and Straightforwardness facets. ANOVA’s at the domain and facet scale levels indicated no significant differences across home language. However ANOVA’s at the item level yielded 33 in total that were problematic, comprising of 12 items that were significant at the 5% level of significance and 21 items at the 10% level of significance. These items were primarily from the N and E domains. Thematic analysis of the open-ended questions of the questionnaire indicated 26 items were difficult to understand and/or inappropriate for the South African context. These items were primarily from the E and A domains. From the original sample of 28 volunteers, two focus groups were formed, comprising of volunteers from the initial sample. The focus groups explored several qualitative issues, including concepts of personality, language and culture and the applicability of the NEO-PI-R for South African user groups. It was perceived that there is a presence of American socio-cultural references within the use of language, grammar and socio-cultural context in the instrument. Thus the results show evidence of language bias in the NEO-PI-R, and subsequently identify particular aspects and items of the instrument that are especially problematic for a South African user group. The present study suggests that the NEO-PI-R would need to be revised to suit the South African context by changing the problematic items.Item Simultaneous normalisation as an approach to establish equivalence in cross-cultural marketing research(2008-09-03T12:35:29Z) Strasheim, CatharinaSince bias threatens the validity of a study, it should be avoided where possible. Across all phases of a research project, bias could be introduced, and in most situations the researcher has reasonable control over processes that may be the source of bias. However, within a quantitative research context in social sciences, where the opinions, attitudes and intentions of people are often sought, response styles patterns due to cultural background, for example, are not within the control of the researcher. Typical response style patterns include acquiescence bias, a tendency to be agreeable to statements, which could be more prevalent in certain cultural groups than other. Another response style pattern is extremity ratings, where respondents tend to avoid the middle categories and mark the scale extremes. When practitioners sample respondents from different cultural groups, it is difficult, and depending on the research design, sometimes impossible to know whether significant differences are an artefact of substantive differences, or of differences in response styles. Adjusting scores for bias has a significant effect on the interpretation of research findings. To correct for bias, the method most commonly used to adjust scores within each cultural group is standardisation. In this research, SIMNORM, a target distribution estimation approach was used for the simultaneous estimation of a class of non-linear transformation functions that transform the composite scores within each cultural group to a standard normal distribution. SIMNORM was found to perform better than standardisation to obtain equivalence across cultural groups when composite scores are used. In addition, SIMITNORM, an item normalisation approach was developed, which is a simultaneous non-linear transformation of item scores to a standard normal target distribution. The results of seven nested SIMITNORM models were compared to raw item scores and standardised scores, using a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis approach, a method that is suitable to test for construct equivalence, metric equivalence and scalar equivalence. SIMITNORM had significant advantages over standardisation as an approach to obtain equivalence over items in a set of data where bias is present.