THE BEHAVIOR DESCRIPTION

[Pages:202] THE BEHAVIOR DESCRIPTION

John E. Oliver

The concept of individual differences can be one of the most interesting and stimulating topics in the study of human resource management. Sometimes, however, people who are studying this concept do not receive an in-depth understanding of personality traits or they are not impressed with the importance of personality differences in personnelplacement decisions, communication, motivation, and other efforts to create effective organizations. Using a personality inventory is one way to raise their interest and involvement, which in turn lead to greater understanding.

Because many personality inventories are expensive and take a great deal of time to administer, score, and interpret, a short, quickly scored, and easily explained instrument (the Behavior Description) was designed as a focus for discussing individual personality traits and related subjects.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSTRUMENT

The theory of Marston (1928), which is similar to that of Emery and Ackoff (1972) in dealing with the response of a person to environmental stimuli, was used to create this instrument. The resulting four behavioral traits may be viewed in combination to illustrate various kinds of behaviors that may affect job performance and communication. Marston labeled the traits dominance, inducement, submissiveness, and compliance. Some other authors have relabeled the traits to make them more acceptable in modern times in teaching managers, personnel professionals, sales people, and others to analyze behavior when trying to improve job performance and interpersonal relations. For example, Merrill and Reid (1981) call them driver, expressive, amiable, and analytical. The traits are also included among the 17,953 identified by Allport and Odbert (1936) and are similar to some of the sixteen source traits pinned down by Cattell (1973).

The Behavior Description refers to these traits as dominance, extroversion, stability, and control. Implicitly, these labels suggest four continuums as did Cattell's: dominantsubmissive, extrovert-introvert, stable-unstable, and controlled-independent. This article presents the Behavior Description and its underlying theory; analyzes the reliability, validity, and meaning of scores on the Behavior Description; and discusses the use of the instrument in teaching or training settings.

The Pfeiffer Library Volume 5, 2nd Edition. Copyright ?1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer

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THE INSTRUMENT

Format

The Behavior Description contains sixteen items. Each item is a group of three adjectives that describe behaviors associated with the four source traits. For example, the words "polished," "diplomatic," "enthusiastic," and "popular" are found in items one, nine, two, and ten and represent behaviors associated with extroversion. The respondent is asked to rank the words by assigning a weight of three to the word that best describes himself or herself, a weight of one to the least descriptive word, and a weight of two to the remaining word.

Scoring

A score is computed on each of the four traits. The scores are computed by transferring the numerical rankings of the words from the instrument to the scoring sheet and totaling the numbers in each column on the scoring sheet. Thus, the dominance score will be the total of all the numbers assigned to the twelve words that describe dominant behavior. The three remaining scores are computed similarly. The scores are then plotted on the graph so that combinations and patterns of traits can be seen and discussed.

Composition of Normative Sample

Data gathered for analyzing the instrument were taken from 220 respondents in classrooms and work places. Included in this normative sample were undergraduate and graduate students;, members of a chapter of the American Society for Personnel Administration; accountants; teachers; social workers; engineers; salespeople; clerical workers; postal employees; nurses; technicians; therapists; investigators; analysts; chemists; architects; planners; negotiators; pilots; navigators; and managers from manufacturing, banking, military, government, hospital, police, laboratory, and sales organizations. Male and female respondents were about equal in number.

Reliability and Validity

Descriptive statistics from the samples are shown in Table 1. The internal consistency of scores as indicated by coefficient alpha averaged .59, and test-retest reliability averaged .66.

The scale intercorrelations in Table 2 indicate some relationships between scales. For instance, dominance is positively related to extroversion and negatively related to control. In other words, individuals who score high on dominance would also tend to score high on extroversion and lower on control, whereas those scoring low on dominance might be expected to score low on extroversion and higher on control.

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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 5, 2nd Edition. Copyright ?1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer

Construct validity of the theory and the items was established by correlating each of the adjectives with the four total scores. Adjectives that were chosen to represent each behavior correlated positively (in the range of .2 to .5) with the total score that represented its related construct and correlated negatively with (or were unrelated to) the other construct scores. For example, the correlation between the word "adventurous" and the dominance score was .28, whereas its correlations with the extroversion, stability, and control scores were -.01, -.21, and -.08, respectively. External validity of the Behavior Description would require correlation between test scores and actual behaviors. Such data are not available at this time.

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics (N = 220)

Possible Range Actual Range Mean Standard Deviation Standard Error Coefficient Alpha* Test-Retest*

Dominance

12-36 14-34 23.7 4.1

.3 .63 .73

Extroversion

12-36 13-33 22.8 4.0

.3 .65 .64

Stability

12-36 13-35 24.8 3.7

.2 .54 .72

*Significant at p ................
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