William W. Farquhar

The Validity and Reliability of the Human Trait Inventory Designed to Measure Under- and Over-Achievement

The problem of the study was to determine if edited and rescaled personality items extracted from previous studies would elicit differential responses from validation and cross-validation groups of underand over-achievers. All analyses were done separately for the sexes. A fur ther purpose of the study was to determine a) the va lidity of the cross-validated items in predicting grade point average and b) the effect of adding the scores based on the cross-validated items to an aptitude measure to predict gradepoint average. The cross-validation analy sis yielded 32 male and 31 female items which correlated .42 for males and .36 for females with grade point aver age. Hoyts analysis of variance reliability coefficients hovered around the .80 level. The items, when treated as a composite score, did make a significant contribution to increase in precision of predicting grade point average from an aptitude predictor alone. CURRENT RESEARCH emphasis on non-in tellectual factors in achievement is uncovering a positive relationship between certain per sonality variables and academic performance (Jensen, 1960; Krug, 1959; Middleton and Guthrie, 1949). Other research has also demon strated a relationship between personality and motivation (Mitchell, 1959). It is the purpose of this study to investigate the interaction of per sonality, achievement and motivation.1 That is, a research scale was 1) devised using personality items found by previous investigators to be related to academic achievement, 2) validated and cross validated on criterion groups of high and low motivated students, and 3) assessed for validity and reliability in estimating high school grade point average. Motivation Definition and Operationalization For the purposes of this research, academic motivation was broadly defined as a combination of forces which initiate, direct, and sustain be havior towards a scholarly goal. Historically, overand under-achievers have been assumed to represent extremes in academic drive. Therefore, it was decided that criterion groups of discrepant achievers would be used to test the motivational hypotheses. Methodology The methodology of the study evolved hypoth eses formulation, instrument construction, sample selection, and item and scale analysis.