Improving personality and interest measurement for purposes of selection and assessment: Summary and general discussion

7 Summary and general discussion 123 Personality and vocational interest measures have been found to be predictive of behavior and academic/job outcomes, consequently, they are often used in practice. Vocational interests are usually measured when people need to decide which vocations they wish to pursue. More than 50% of all Dutch aspiring students fills in a vocational interest measure before they choose the vocational path that they wish to pursue (Markteffect, 2011). Personality is usually measured when someone has already chosen a vocation and is applying for a job. Based on annual revenue estimates of personality tests (e.g., The Economist, 2013), a very conservative estimate would be that over 16 million people—globally—fill out a personality measure each year. Personality and vocational interests are thus important for major life decisions (i.e., finding a vocation and being selected for a job) and are used by a vast number of people. Therefore, the quality of personality and vocational interest measurement is of the utmost importance. The present dissertation starts with an investigation of an improvement to personality measurement that is usually referred to as contextualization (Schmit, Ryan, Stierwalt, & Powell, 1995). Contextualization is a process in which a meaningful situation is added to personality items. This modification is known to increase the predictive validity of personality measures for behaviors relevant to the added situation. Separate studies of the dissertation investigated which types of contextualization are more preferable in terms of predictive validity and participant reactions. Next, the effect of contextualization on differential predictive validity, which has been shown to occur in personality measures (e.g. Subsequently, a recent model of personality, the HEXACO model (Lee & Ashton, 2004), was related to a recent model of vocational interests, the Spherical representation of vocational interests (Tracey & Rounds, 1996). For this purpose we translated a US-developed measure of the Spherical representation to the Dutch language. Last, we investigated the measurement of vocational interests using self-and other-ratings. This discussion chapter concludes the dissertation by answering the six research questions posed in the introduction in light of the findings of the five empirical studies described in chapters two through six. Additionally, strengths, limitations, and practical implications of the present dissertation are discussed and suggestions for future studies are proposed. At the end of this chapter, a general conclusion is provided. 7 Summary and general discussion 1. Summary and discussion of main findings