DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A PERSONALITY SCALE FOR JOB SELECTION IN ORGANIZATIONS IN THE NORTH WEST REGION OF CAMEROON

ABSTRACT

This study was aimed at developing and validating a personality scale for job selection in organizations (PS-JSO). The research also determined differential subscales functioning concerning gender, religion and ethnicity.

The researcher made use of the instrumentation research design reasons for which a new instrument was developed to determine prospective employees’ personality traits. Geographically, the study was carried out in five organizations in the North West region of Cameroon.

The population of the study comprised 51 human resource personnel in the five organizations. The purposive and snowball (network/chain) sampling technique was employed in selecting 25 human resource personnel who formed the sample of the study.

The researcher purposively selected at least one human resource personnel in each of the organizations who then recruited other colleagues for the study (snowball sampling).

The instrument used for this research work was a personality scale for job selection in organizations (PS-JSO) developed by the researcher for the collection of quantitative data about personality traits.

A pool of 75 potential statements was initially written by the researcher, each with six levels of response options consistent with the established Likert scale format. For each of the constructs, 15 items were designed.

Initial validation of the instrument by expert judgment using the content validity index witnessed 13 items dropped. Therefore 62 items survived the expert judgment.

Finally, 54 items were retained from factor analysis which constituted the PS-JSO scale. Convergent, discriminant and reliability indices were used as evidence for the construct validity of the scale.

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s test of sphericity were used to determine the factorability of the dataset.

To determine the number of factors to extract a combination of five criteria were used: (a) the a priori hypothesis that the instrument consisted of six factors, (b) eigenvalue-greater-than-one, (c) the scree test, (d) the parallel analysis (PA), and (e) the interpretability of the factor solution.

Principle Component Analysis (PCA) with varimax(orthogonal) rotation was employed to identify the factors that most efficiently explained variation in the sample dataset.

A minimum criterion of 0.40 was used for factor retention and 0.10 for cross-loading. Using one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) a significant mean difference was witnessed between the subscales and gender, religion and ethnicity.

The finding revealed a 6factor refined model of the PS-JSO made up of 54 items. PS-JSO provides human resource managers and organizational psychologists with an easy-to-administer and straightforwardly interpreted instrument that helps them collect information about personality traits in the job selection process.

The human resource managers and organizational psychologists should use the PS-JSO to get the right number of people with the right personality, experience and competencies in the right jobs at the right time and the right cost.

The researcher suggested that a study be carried out on the development and validation of a personality scale for job placement in organizations in Cameroon 

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Introduction

The cultivation of high-order thinking skills in general and divergent thinking abilities, in particular, is recognized as one of the most important goals of organizations that are personality dependent, (Robinson, 2007; Chien, 2010; Craig 2001).

In a world that experiences rapid transformation; creative problem-solving skills are viewed as the essential all-time ability needed to effectively address unforeseen challenges that demand innovative solutions in organizational settings (Duch 2001; Osborn and Mumford, 2006; Shefield 2011; and Tan, 2010). Accordingly, calls by human resource experts to focus organizational efforts on personality traits such as creativity, innovativeness, hard work and integrity as key ingredients in organizational success have intensified over the years. (Josu and Dion, 2008; Kimani, 2008; Mangena, 2007; Maseau, 2008; and Ogot, 2007).

The organization needs to succeed and survive, or compete effectively in the global economy in this era of globalization. Therefore, employers must be in the position to propound and practice the selection of employees in the best way. 

Merris (2008) and Sahlberg (2009) postulate that the success of an organization is directly linked to the performance of those who work in it. Underachievement can be a result of poor selection measures which leads to workplace failures.

Every organization has its requirement strategies in acquiring employees. It is thus vital that organizations select employees with the quality essential for continued success in this competitive global village. One important means of achieving success is through proper selection practices.

One of the most significant developments in the field of organisational Psychology in recent times is the increasing importance given to human resources (Djabatey 2012). People are vital to organizations as they offer perspectives, values and attributes to organizational life, and when selected effectively, these human traits can be of considerable benefits to the organization.

Mullins (1999) and Djabatey (2012) contend that the continued growth of an organization depends on its ability to recruit and select high-quality personnel at all levels. While recruitment is the process of identifying and attracting potential candidates from within and outside an organization to begin evaluating them for future employment, selection begins when the right calibre of candidates are identified (Walker, 2009).

The primary goal of scale development is to create a valid measure of an underlying construct. It is essential to commence with a clear conceptualization of the target construct, the content of the initial factor pool in the scale should be over-inclusive and factor wording needs careful attention, (Clark and Watson, 2014).

Factor pool should be tested, along with variables that assess closely related constructs on a heterogeneous sample representing the entire range of the target population. In the selection of scale factors, the goal is unidimensionality therefore, virtually all inter factor correlations should at least be moderate in magnitude. Factor analysis plays a crucial role in ensuring the unidimensionality of scales.

 However, most recruitment and selection processes have elements of subjective judgement inherent in them. But treating job applicants professionally and positively is more likely to leave them, whether they are successful or not, with a positive view of the organization and how it has dealt with the applicants (National University of Ireland, 2006). Experience also shows that a successful appointment can produce results that impact favourably on the wider aspects of organizational life while a poor one can have damaging effects far outside the organization in which it is made. However, the recruitment and selection of employees also provide an opportunity for the organization to present itself in a favourable light. This chapter will therefore shed light on; the background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, hypothesis, justification of the study, the significance of the study, the scope of the Study and operational definition of terms

Background of the study

The use of paper-and-pencil psychological tests in human resource selection was essentially nonexistent before the beginning of the 20^thcentury. The contemporary application of psychological tests and measures of personnel selection can be traced to the dual influences of the technological era and the field of management science. Although the investigation of personality has roots that extend to the ancient Greeks, many psychologists of the late 19^thcentury viewed the application of psychological testing to problems in business and industry with disdain (Hearnshaw, 1987)

By the end of the 19^thcentury, however, the field of industrial psychology emerged with individuals such as Walter Dill Scott and Hugo Munsterberg advocating the exploration of psychological principles to applied problems in education and business (Mankin, Ames, &Grodski, 1980). The field of industrial psychology and the role of psychological testing achieved a substantial level of legitimacy when in 1916 the National Academy of Sciences created the National Research Council, a group of prominent psychologists who developed a set of tests and measures to select and place troops during World War I (Driskell& Olmstead, 1989). Despite some reluctance within the military, the government-funded the testing process and some 3.5 million soldiers were tested and placed, thus validating the role of psychological testing in organizations (Water, 1987).

At about the same time, the influence of industrial engineers provided additional impetus for psychological testing in selection. The influence of Frederic Taylor began in the late 19^thcentury after World War I. During this period, American business grew in size and complexity and faced increasing competition and employment regulation. The natural response was a push for the development of rational management systems and the increasing application of scientific methods to organizational problems. A group of individuals referred to as the “entrepreneurial psychologists” expanded the field of industrial psychology through their marketing efforts and the establishment of professional organizations and journals (Water, 1987).

Ultimately, the control of the field fell to the academic community challenged many of the conventional tools of selection such as employment interviewing and character analysis and began to develop psychological instruments to take their place. The application of the scientific method to selection saw standards for test development, evaluation, and validation emerge. The distinction between scientific management and industrial psychology became more pronounced as psychologists began to emphasize the importance of individual factors such as personality and intelligence rather than contextual factors such as incentives (Water, 1987; Viteles, 1989).

The field of psychological testing continued to expand throughout World War II as the federal government established organizations such as the Committee on Service Personnel and Selection to investigate the role of psychological testing in the war effort. Throughout the war, psychologists continued advancing the application of psychological testing to selection, training, and performance evaluation (Driskell& Olmstead, 1989). The effectiveness of psychological testing during the war effort has been documented (Flanagan, 1947). As a result of these successes, several organizations were established to support research: the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the ArmyResearch Institute for the Behavioral Sciences, and the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory. Psychologists continued the development of selection and classification testing culminating in the use of the Armed Forces Qualification Test and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery as widely accepted instruments for selection, placement, and training decisions for recruits (Driskell& Olmstead, 1989; Lubinski, 1996).

In 1884, Galton was the first person who is known to have investigated the hypothesis that it is possible to derive a comprehensive taxonomy of human personality traits by sampling language; the lexical hypothesis. In 1936, Allport and Odbert put Galton’s hypothesis into practice by extracting 4,504 adjectives which they believed were descriptive of observable and relatively permanent traits from the dictionaries at that time. In 1940, Cattell retained the adjectives and eliminated synonyms to reduce the total to 171. He constructed a self-report instrument for the clusters of personality traits he found from the adjectives, which he called the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. Based on a subset of only 20 of the 36 dimensions that Cattell had originally discovered, Ernest Types and Raymond Christal claimed to have found just five broad factors which they labelled: “surgency”, “agreeableness”, “dependability”, “emotional stability”, and “culture”. Norman subsequently relabeled “dependability” as “conscientiousness”

Thurstone, in his presidential address to the APA in 1934 indicated that he had found five independent common factors in his factor analysis of 60 adjectives used by subjects to describe well-known acquaintances (Digman, 1995). Even though Thurstone’s temperament scales did not correspond exactly to the current five-factor model, his method of factor analysis was used by many, including Cattell. He began investigating personality traits in the mid-1940s based on the trait terms developed by Allport and Odbert (1936). Lexicon is made up of thousands of terms describing personality and can be useful when deciphering recurrent traits.

Cattell began his research with a trait list of 4,500 descriptive terms and developed a set of 35 complex bipolar variables, in other words, a composite set of opposite adjectives (Goldberg, 1993). The variables were then factored and he asserted that he had found 16 personality factors. Cattell compiled the results of three studies and developed his 16-PF questionnaire. Later, when Cattell’s results were further factor analyzed, researchers concluded that only five factors were replicable (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism). Cattellis considered by most personality psychologists to be the primary contributor to the emergence of the five-factor model. Substantial credit also goes to Types and Christal, two U.S air force researchers.

In a 1961 series of air force studies on the effect of length of acquaintance on the accuracy of peer ratings, Types and Christall found three different response formats and seminal comparisons of factor structures across diverse samples (Goldberg, 1993). Types and Christal used a set of 30 scales borrowed from Cattell’s list and found five factors. They also found evidence of the factors in other studies that were stable across replications of the works of Cattell and Fisk. Types and Christal conducted what can be seen as a meta-analysis because they related their results to results derived by analyzing the correlations of other investigators and comparing the five factors across other studies (Digman, 1995).

The “big five” fully resurface in the 1980s due to a movement toward behaviourism. The assimilation of the current model can be credited to two separate systems, the questionnaire approach and the lexical approach. The most important of the two separate systems is the questionnaire, developed by McRae and Costa in their NEO personality inventory, which is a 3-factor personality model that included neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience. The NEO-PI was developed by incorporating a variety of questionnaires including those developed by Eysenck, Jackson, and Wiggins, as well as questionnaires such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (Goldberg, 1993). McRae and Costa identified that neuroticism, extraversion, and openness to experience were major components of psychological tests.

The five-factor model (FFM) also has roots in studies using the lexical hypothesis, which discusses dictionary lexicon to recognize personality descriptive terms and note how many share aspects of their meanings. The English language contains thousands of words used to describe personality and analysis can be used to find similar factors. Using the lexical hypothesis approach Lewis Goldberg concluded that there were indeed five personality factor markers. In a 1980 symposium in Honolulu, four prominent researchers, Goldberg, Naomi, Comrey, and Digman, reviewed the available personality instruments. This event was followed by widespread acceptance of the five-factor model among personality researchers. When Goldberg finally presented his research to McRae and Costa in 1983, his “efforts to convince them that five orthogonal factors were necessary to account for phenotypic personality differences fell on receptive ears” (Goldberg, 1993). It was at this point that the lexical approach and questionnaire approach merged. McRae and Costa were persuaded to add conscientiousness and agreeableness to their model and the structure had now been formed for the present FFM.

The Big Five is largely based on the lexical hypothesis. The lexical hypothesis states that important individual differences will come to be encoded into the language over time (Goldberg, 1993). Dating back to the 1930s, multiple researchers have subjected lists of personality traits found in dictionaries to factor analysis and have arrived at a 5- factor structure (Fiske, 1949; Goldberg, 1990; Norman, 1963; Saucier & Goldberg, 1996; Thurstone, 1934). These five factors serve as a way of classifying hundreds, if not thousands, of more specific traits or attributes (Goldberg, 1995).

            The five-factor structure has been found across different instruments (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 1985, 1987), and cultures (e.g. Borkenau&Ostendorf, 1989; Digman&Takemoto-Chock, 1981), as well as using ratings obtained from different sources (e.g. Fiske, 1949; Norman, 1963; McCrae & Costa, 1987). Additionally, the FFM includes several assumptions including individual differences are stable over time, have a genetic and biological component, and individuals can be described by their scores on the five domains as well as their facets (John & Robbins,1993).

Although the use of personality testing in Industrial/ Organizational (I/O) Psychology has been criticized in the past, it has gained ground and has been growing in popularity(Guion&Gottier, 1995). One reason for the current expansion of research in personality testing has been the advent of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality. Before the FFM or big five gained acceptance in the field of I/O Psychology, researchers did not have a complete and parsimonious taxonomy for classifying personality traits. Within the nation of Cameroon, personality testing appears to be a novel concept in most organizations. Recruitment and selection of employees are mostly based on cognitive measures and job interviews; recent years have seen interest in personality measures but have not been fully used as selection measures partly due to the unavailability of well-constructed measures to predict job performance. The five-factor model consists of Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN)

Openness is a personality trait concerned with a general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience. People who are open to experience are intellectually curious, open to emotion, sensitive to beauty and willing to try new things. They tend to be more creative and aware of their feelings when compared to closed people, they are also more likely to hold unconventional beliefs.

Conscientiousness is a tendency to display self-discipline, act dutifully, and strive for achievement against measures or outside expectations. It is related to how people control, regulate, and direct their impulses. High scores on conscientiousness indicate a preference for planned rather than spontaneous behaviour. The average level of conscientiousness rises among young adults and then declines among older adults.

Extraversion is characterized by breadth of activities (as opposed to depth), surgency from external activity/situations, and energy creation from external means. The trait is marked by pronounced engagement with the external world. Extraverts enjoy interacting with people and are often perceived as full of energy. They tend to be enthusiastic, action-oriented individuals. They possess high group visibility like talking and asserting themselves. Introverts have lower social engagement and energy levels than extroverts. They tend to seem quiet, low-key, deliberate, and less involved in the social world. Their lack of social involvement should not be interpreted as shyness or depression; instead, they are more independent of their social world than extroverts. Introverts need less stimulation than extroverts and more time alone. This does not mean that they are unfriendly or antisocial; rather, they are reserved in social situations.

The agreeableness trait reflects individual differences. It is a general concern with social harmony. Agreeable individuals value getting along with others, they are generally considerate, kind, generous, trusting and trustworthy, helpful, and willing to compromise their interests with others. Agreeable people also have an optimistic view of human nature. Because agreeableness is a social trait, research has shown that one’s agreeableness positively correlates with the quality of relationships with one’s team members.

Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression. It is sometimes called emotional instability. According to Eysenck’s (1967) theory of personality; neuroticism is interlinked with a low tolerance for stress or aversive stimuli. Those who score high in neuroticism are emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress. They are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. Their negative emotional reactions tend to persist for unusually long periods which means they are often in a bad mood.

Neuroticism is connected to a pessimistic approach towards work, which might think that work impedes personal relationships, and apparent anxiety linked with work. Furthermore, neurotic people may display more skin-conductance reactivity. These problems in emotional regulation can diminish the ability of a person to think, make decisions, and cope effectively with stress. Lacking contentment in one’s life achievements can correlate with high neuroticism traits and increase one’s likelihood of falling into clinical depression. Moreover, individuals high in neuroticism tend to experience more negative life events, but neuroticism also changes in response to positive and negative life experiences.

Within the context of job selection in organizations in Cameroon, The desire to ascertain the type of traits possessed by job applicants have been receiving attention in the last few years, job interviews have always been and are used as a selection measure to assess personality. Cognizant of the fact that a complete parsimonious and well-designed contextual scale is unavailable for testing personality traits, organizations are battling with employees’ work attitude because employment was based on other measures without a full description of employees’ personality traits in/her functional area. It is common practice to see employees sanctioned and dismissed for displaying undesirable work behaviour. Worthy of mention is the fact that personality testing at the time of job selection in organisations in Cameroon should as a matter of necessity significantly relate to the work culture of the organization, to hire workers who are effective and efficient in their sphere of influence within the workplace.

It is widely recognized that many human resource functions can dramatically alter the effectiveness of organizations. None have more potential impact on an organization’s effectiveness and its ability to develop a sustainable competitive advantage than the staffing function. The role of human resources in creating competitive advantage has been broadly acknowledged. The resource-based view offered by Barney and Wright (1998) argue that human resource skills add value because talent is rare, non-substitutable, and difficult to imitate. Similarly, well known best practice models argue that traditional sources of competitive advantage such as economies of scale, proprietary technology, or protected markets have become less important in sustaining long-term competitive advantage than how companies utilize their human resources (Peffer, 1995).

To achieve a competitive advantage, organizations must be able to select individuals who have exceptional skills and whose talents, values, and motives best fit the organization’s culture, structure, and reward systems. If it is true that talent is rare and vital to organizational success, the organization’s system of selection must include processes that allow them to accurately identify personality, aptitude, ability, and other characteristics in applicants that are recognized as contributing to their effectiveness. This need plays a pivotal role in the staffing function and the importance of psychological testing in the development of sustainable competitive advantage cannot be overemphasized.

If we can assume that this contemporary view of competitive advantage through people is a paradigm widely embraced by both managers and scholars, it follows that psychological testing for job applicants is likely to become more important in the future. Managers must understand the potential and the limitations of psychological testing in employee selection. (Taylor 1916 in Mankin 1980). Taylor’s successors, most notably Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, worked to refine the approaches of scientific management, especially in attempts to consider the psychology of the worker and formed closer alliances with industrial psychology.

The growth of modern management science and solid organizational planning has become the key differentiator enabling competitive success in organizations (Cascio&Aguinis, 2005).

As we move through the 21st century where a globalized workforce is the basis of competition we find that human resource planning (job recruitment, selection and development) are of prime importance.

It is worthy of mention that the success of organizations in the world and Cameroon, in particular, is directly linked to the performance of those who work in it.

As observed in most organizations in Cameroon, underachievement has over the years been attributed to poor job selection and workplace failures.

Selecting the wrong people or failing to anticipate fluctuations in the selection of the needs can be costly, conscious efforts must be put into human resource planning (Biles 1990).

People are individuals who bring their perspectives, values and attribute to organizational life, and when managed effectively, these human traits can bring considerable benefits to organizations.

One of the most significant developments in organizations in Cameroon is the increasing importance given to human resources.

More and more attention is being paid to motivational aspects of human personality, particularly the need for self-esteem, group belonging, and self-actualization.

This new awakening of humanism and humanization all over the world has enlarged the scope of applying principles of human resource management in organizations.

The development of people, their competencies, and the process development of the total organization are the main concerns of human resource management (Mullins, 1999).

Recruitment and selection is the process of attracting individuals on a timely basis, in sufficient numbers and with appropriate qualifications (Walker, 2009).

Thus recruitment is the process of identifying and attracting potential candidates from within and outside an organization to begin evaluating them for future employment. Selection then begins when the right calibre of candidates are identified.

Selection is thus the process through which organizations make decisions about who will or will not be allowed to join the organization.

The selection process varies from organization to organization, job to job, and country to country. Some of the processes include screening applications and resumes, testing and reviewing work samples, interviewing, checking references and background.

Organizations use these processes to increase the likelihood of hiring individuals who possess the right skills and abilities to be successful at their jobs (Walker, 2009). It has been an issue of debate that for an organization to build and sustain competitive advantage, proper staffing is critical.

Recruitment and selection is a major human resource management function as it encompasses all organizational practices and decisions.

Recent technological advances, globalization, social trends and changes within organizations have brought new challenges for recruitment and selection (Hax, 2001)

According to Dessler (2003), there has been a significant amount of research examining what skills and qualities employers value most in job applicants hence the need for a personality test.

Qualifications, work experience and communication or interpersonal skills are the most frequently identified qualities in most organisations in Cameroon.

Work experience and qualifications are measures of competence concerning an applicant’s technical skills, whereas the concept of communication skills appears to be a generic term incorporating many different specific skills. Indeed, communication in the workplace encompasses team skills; leadership skills; the ability to negotiate with or persuade others; problem-solving skills; organizational skills; crisis management skills; and presentation skills.

Other communication competencies include cultural adaptation, social competence and language proficiency. An applicant’s success with job seeking is related to their ability to describe their experiences, skills and knowledge through a range of media. Thus, effective communication is an essential competency required by job applicants.

To manage a diverse workforce effectively, an organization must hire and promote the most capable candidate for a job, while being mindful of the necessity to build a workforce that is representative of the greater business community.

This may be achieved through using more appropriate and inclusive recruitment and selection strategies.

Despite a recent increase in published literature discussing recruitment and selection practices, there has been little change in the types of methods used to recruit and select employees (Kelly, 2006).

Better recruitment and selection strategies result in improved organizational outcomes.

The more effectively organizations recruit and select candidates, the more likely they are to hire and retain satisfied employees.

In addition, the effectiveness of an organization’s selection system can influence bottom-line business outcomes, such as productivity and financial performance.

Hence, investing in the development of a comprehensive and valid selection system is money well spent.

In Cameroon, recruitment and selection processes for job placements in both public and private organizations are mostly affiliated with networking and political inclinations. Organizations must select people with the quality essential for continued success in this competitive global village of today.

The only means of achieving this success is through proper recruitment and selection practices. Heneman (2000) asserts that the recruitment and selection process is vitally important to any organization desirous of attracting and appointing qualified personnel.

Getting the right people in the right place at the right time doing the right job is an essential element of the recruitment and selection process in organizations.

For the process to meet desired goals, it must be valid and measurable, with minimum adverse impact.                                

The challenge for many organizations in Cameroon has been to demonstrate how scientifically derived recruitment and selecting practices add value to an organization’s performance.

Recruitment and selecting staff is expensive both in terms of time and money, and it is therefore important that the process is carried out smoothly and efficiently and results in the appointment of a person who fits the job.

Organizations exist not because of their desire to be benevolent but to also make a profit. Though their initial concern may be that of image building and winning the goodwill of the public, the ultimate goal is the achievement of the organizational objectives and profit maximization.

This means that there is the need to plan strategically to cater for the short, medium and long term growth of the organization. For this goal to be effectively achieved, the selection process needs to be given adequate attention holistically by assessing applicants’ cognitive ability, psychomotor ability and most importantly their personality traits to ensure they have what it takes for the job.

Against this backdrop, this research, therefore, focuses on the development and validation of a personality scale for job selection in organizations (PS-JSO).

Statement of the Problem

The fields of industrial and organizational psychology, engineering, and management merged to deliver a practical application of psychological testing to organizational problems, but not all forms of psychological testing enjoyed the same level of acceptance. While cognitive ability testing became broadly established and gained rather wide public acceptance, other types of testing, most notably personality testing, did not. The validity of cognitive ability tests for predicting job skill acquisition and performance has been widely established and has its economic value in organizations through the selection of superior job candidates. However, the potential success of cognitive ability testing has been tempered by the universally recognized fact that these types of tests tend to discriminate against some minority groups.

Personality tests by contrast have not traditionally enjoyed the same level of acceptance and their use in employment selection is much more controversial. Information gotten by the researcher stipulated that many organizations do not use personality tests because their human resource personnel think the psychometric properties lack credibility, the inability of the test to reveal applicants’ personality traits. However, many of such problems in personality testing originated with historical controversies over how personality is defined, how personality traits are described and measured, and how traits relate to behaviour. Before the development of the five-factor model general agreement on these questions were lacking.

The growing interest in I/O psychology has therefore spurred the human resource department in organizations to adopt best practices in the recruitment and selection of employees. This is in a bit to attract the best quality so as gain competitive advantage in the global market where organizations are constantly in search of best practices. Organizations nowadays have seen the inevitability of personality testing in revealing applicants’ traits are in dying need of such tests which are contextually applicable and sustainable. The success of organizations in this era depends on the calibre of the manpower that steers the day to day affairs of the organizations.

The process of using valid and reliable tests in selecting all categories of employees in organizations now gaining ground more than ever before due to the calibre of manpower selected by the organizations that have been using these tests. Even though it is the wish of every organization to attract the best human resource to channel their collective effort into excellent performances, unconventional selection practices mar the process. Managing people is a definite challenge both at strategic or even organizational levels, therefore, the Job selection phase in every organization is of prime importance because it sets the final stage for whom to be selected. The HRD must eliminate prejudices of all sorts and focus on hiring workers whose input will be instrumental in gaining a competitive advantage and achieving organizational goals. The choice of well-developed and validated instruments is primordial and indispensable in achieving this goal.

The researcher haven developed an overwhelming interest in the recruitment and selection practices in organizations, probed into how workers are hired in organizations. Based on available literature on recruitment and selection practices and interviews with many human resource managers, the researcher discovered that personality selection practices in organizations have been limited to unconventional methods like family and friendly ties and job interviews which cannot completely reveal applicants’ personality traits. Against this backdrop, the researcher sought to develop and validate a personality scale for job selection in organizations taking into consideration how sex, religion and ethnicity function differently with the personality subscales.

Research Objectives

• Generally, this research work was aimed at developing and validating a personality scale for job selection in organizations (PS-JSO).

• Specifically, the study purported to:

• Identify personality factors/constructs for job selection in organizations.

• construct and validate items to measure personality factors/constructs.

• Determine the differential functioning of the personality subscales concerning gender, religion and ethnicity.

Research questions

Generally, the researcher sought to find out how the personality scale for job selection in organizations can be developed and validated?

This research was grounded by the following specific research questions. 

• What are the personality factors/constructs for job selection in organizations?

• How can items be constructed and validated to measure personality factors/constructs?

• To what extent can personality subscales function differently concerning gender, religion and ethnicity?

Research Hypotheses

The following research hypothesis guided the study;

General hypothesis

Ha: The development and validation of the personality scale are used significantly for job selection in organizations.

Ho: The development and validation of the personality scale are not used significantly for job selection in organizations.

Specific Hypothesis

Ha: The personality subscales for job selection differ significantly with respect to gender, religion and ethnicity

Ho: The personality subscales for job selection does not differ significantly with respect to gender, religion and ethnicity

Significance of the study

The significance of this dissertation is hereby elucidated as follows;

The newly developed scale will serve as a yardstick for organizations to use in the selection process in determining the personality traits of the job applicants. The validation process of the newly developed scale will contribute valuable empirical substance to other researchers, measurement experts and psychologists, equipping them with an in-depth understanding of the multiple processes involved in scale development.

The study will benefit society at large in that it will add to the existing literature and the stock of empirical works already written on human resource planning and development with a focus on recruitment and selection from a personality trait perspective. The process of Personality testing in job selection will help to retain employees who can function following organizational demands and gain a competitive advantage in the global market.

Furthermore, the study will serve as a springboard to researchers and Psychologists who want to delve much into personality testing in the recruitment and selection process. It equally reveals the importance of the recruitment and selection process to the socio-economic development in organizations. These include offering employment to people with the right personality traits.

This study is significant to organizations in general because it emphasizes the value of proper selection despite its cost. Selection is an essential part of any organization and it pays to do it properly. When organizations choose the right people for a job and treat them appropriately, these people not only produce good results but also tend to stay with the organization longer. In such circumstances, the organization’s initial and ongoing investment in them is well rewarded. An organization may have all of the latest technology and the best physical resources, but if it does not have the right people, it will struggle to achieve the results it requires.

Through this research work, organizations will have the opportunity to reflect on their recruitment and selection processes and identify the challenges facing such practices and find lasting solutions. It equally provides useful insights in the augment recruitment and selection practices in organizations.