Ingwer Borg

Correcting Big Five Personality Measurements for Acquiescence: An 18‐Country Cross‐Cultural Study

For groups of persons with low or medium levels of education, Big Five personality scales typically yield scores that poorly replicate the idealized Big Five factor pattern. On the basis of representative samples of German adults, Rammstedt et al. have demonstrated that correcting each persons score for acquiescence eliminates this problem. In the present 18–country study using large samples representative of each countrys adult population, we found that, in all cases, correcting for acquiescence did indeed improve the congruence of factor loadings with an idealized Big Five pattern. However, although this correction led to acceptably high correspondence levels in all countries classified as individualistic, this was not always true for non–individualistic countries. Possible reasons for this finding are discussed. Copyright

Does the Value Circle Exist Within Persons or Only Across Persons

This study tests whether the Schwartz (1992) value circle exists within individuals, not only across individuals, thereby providing evidence for the within-person rationale underlying the value circle. We analyze responses from five samples (a representative sample in Britain, a general population sample in the United States, and university students in Britain and Iran) varying in value measures of the Schwartz value theory (SVS, PVQ40, PVQ21). An unfolding model is used to map each persons value profile into a two-dimensional space representing both persons and values. In all samples, clear value circles were found, with values ordered around the circle largely according to the theory. The model also represents most individuals well. The value circle exists within individuals, providing strong support for the underlying within-person rationale for the Schwartz (1992) value theory. The unfolding analysis allows identifying which persons fit the model less well and in which way, identifying how meaningful subgroups differ in their value profiles, and testing whether meaningful subgroups have different value structures. The model opens up many new possibilities for research linking values to other variables.

A Model for Judgments of Work Values and Job Satisfaction

First, a discussion is presented of some previous research results on the relation of a persons assessment of the importance (“value”) of an object and his or her attitude toward that object, in particular on the relation of work values with job satisfaction. Then, a model is formulated and simulated to explain how both types of judgments are generated. In Phase 1, the elements of the mental representation of the respective attitude object are aggregated by two composition rules to an overall satisfaction and an overall importance judgment, respectively. In addition, possible dissonance of high importance and low satisfaction is reduced by a coping function.

MDS Fit Measures, Their Relations, and Some Algorithms

A problem in MDS is how to evaluate the Stress value. Once a solution is found, how good is it? In Chapter 3, several statistical simulation studies were reported. Here we give an interpretation of normalized Stress in terms of the proportion of the explained sum-of-squares of the disparities. We also show that normalized Stress is equal to Stress-1 at a minimum and that the configurations only differ by a scale factor. Then, other common measures of fit for MDS are discussed. For these fit measures, we refer to some recent algorithmic work.