Original Research

The manifestation of the 10 personality aspects amongst the facets of the Basic Traits Inventory

Xander van Lill, Nicola Taylor
African Journal of Psychological Assessment | Vol 3 | a31 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/ajopa.v3i0.31 | © 2021 Xander van Lill, Nicola Taylor | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 16 July 2020 | Published: 30 March 2021

About the author(s)

Xander van Lill, Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa; and, Product and Research, JVR Africa Group, Johannesburg, South Africa
Nicola Taylor, Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa; and, Data Enablement, JVR Africa Group, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

Personality traits play an important role in the prediction of important work-related outcomes. Adapting the level at which personality constructs are measured can assist in predicting work-related outcomes at the corresponding level of specificity with greater accuracy. This study investigates whether eight hierarchical factors (also referred to as personality aspects) manifest amongst the facets of the Basic Traits Inventory (BTI). The study is based on an archival dataset of 1359 South African employees. Orthogonal first-order, single-factor, higher-order, oblique lower-order and bifactor models were specified to investigate the hierarchical structure of eight of the 10 personality aspects. The evidence supports the notion that seven of the 10 personality aspects (as measured by the BTI) could be more parsimoniously interpreted as total scores, but not necessarily hierarchical factors, amongst South African employees. It is, therefore, practically meaningful for practitioners to calculate such scores when the need arises for more detailed levels of prediction when selecting applicants or developing employees.

Keywords

10 personality aspects; Basic Traits Inventory; bifactor structure; hierarchical factor analysis, bandwidth-fidelity

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Crossref Citations

1. Criterion validity of the 10 personality aspects for performance in South Africa
Xander van Lill, Cobi Hayes
African Journal of Psychological Assessment  vol: 6  year: 2024  
doi: 10.4102/ajopa.v6i0.129