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

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.