CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study co-authored by two experts in human resources psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign could help researchers and employers identify differences in how people respond to personality tests. Shows a good way.
The tool combines two existing measurement models called the Mixed Dominance Deployment Model, or MixDUM, to help HR professionals make better choices by extracting more accurate personality information about job candidates. Managers can be more productive and diverse, said Bo Jiang, a professor of labor employment relations and psychology at the University of Illinois and lead author of the paper. He said he is calling for an equal workplace.
“The central contribution of this study is that we have developed a tool that helps researchers identify differences in people’s responses to personality questionnaires,” he said. “Previous research has assumed that everyone uses the same response process, but we found that there are two ways in which people are likely to respond to personality items, and that they differ from person to person. proposed that a method could be adopted. We need to correctly identify how each person responds to the personality items. Our mixed model was thus created. ”
The first response method is called the “dominance process,” and the second is called the “deployment process,” Zhang said.
Using extraversion as an example, the dominance approach holds that “the higher the extraversion, the more likely they are to agree with extraversion items,” he said. “Essentially, this dominant approach assumes that there is a gradually increasing relationship between your level of extraversion and the probability of agreeing with extraversion items.”
With a developmental approach, “you would say you strongly agree only if what you read on this item closely matches your true level of extroversion,” Chan said. “If you are more extraverted or introverted than the degree of extraversion implied by that item, you will disagree with that item. The unfolding approach creates an inverted U between your level of extraversion and the probability of agreement. It is assumed that there is a relationship between character types.
Chan pointed out that there are big differences in people’s reactions.
“Some people may follow a dominant approach, and others may follow an unfolding approach,” he says. “Without tools to distinguish between these two types of responses, we would continue to apply the same method to score everyone’s responses, leading to inaccurate estimates of people’s true personalities. ”
But mixed models solve this problem by integrating the two response processes into one model, Zhang says.
“The tools we have developed can help distinguish between these two types of reactions in a population, rather than assuming that everyone uses the same reaction process,” he said. . “You can also score based on which group you belong to, which is the main contribution of this model. I was able to discover my sexuality.”
The significance of the study, Zhang said, is that it will be easier for managers to screen employees more accurately and determine whether they are suitable for a particular work environment.
“If you want to create a more diverse and happy workplace, that means you need to put the right people in the right positions,” he said. “So how do we get the right people in the right places? The first step is to accurately assess their personality. And our model is It’s a more detailed and subtle method.
“This is not a way to measure personality. It’s just a better way to extract relevant information from the data collected from surveys. That means we can more accurately estimate their personality.”
Zhang’s co-authors are R. Philip Chalmers of York University. Lingyue Li of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tianjun Sun of Rice University; and Louis Tay of Purdue University.
The paper was published in the journal Organizational Research Methods.
