A META-ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS AND STUDENTS ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Transcription

1 A META-ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS AND STUDENTS ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT Nur Safwati Ibrahim, Nur Syaliza Hanim Che Yusof, Nor Fatihah Abd Razak, Nur Dalila Norshahidi Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia ABSTRACT Personality is likely to play significant roles in influencing students' academic achievement. Several studies have shown that personality factors will predict academic achievement over and above students' ability. The purpose of this study was to explore the correlation between the five higher order personality dimensions that are Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Neuroticism called the `Big Five' personality traits (Costa et al., 2006) and students' academic achievement measured by GPA. This study is conducted by review the recent empirical literature on the correlation between the Big Five personality traits and GPA. This study found that out of 64 studies, only 6 individual studies were met the criteria to be included in this meta-analysis. The data analyses involved in this study are variability estimation, Chi Square test of heterogeneity (Cochrans' Q), I 2 heterogeneity index (Higgins and Thompson, 2002) and random effect models. This meta-analysis indicates that Conscientiousness is the best dimension of the Big Five personalities that are highly correlates to GPA compared to others dimension. Field of Research: Meta-Analysis, Big Five personalities, academic achievement Introduction Education sector is the one of the most important industries and playing a vital role in national development. For the development country, high quality of education will contribute a great impact on the countries social, economic and political system. At present, the development of self-concept among the students is quite worrying. Most students have low self-concept and they are so passive and negative. Without they realize, those attitude could affect their academic achievement. Therefore, it is pertinent for educators to be aware and to study what factors that can affect the student achievement. One of the studies conducted by Abu-Bakar et al. (2010) on 1484 local university students who were follow the education, science, humanities, agriculture/ technical/ engineering programs has shown that there is a positive significant correlation between student's attitude and academic achievement while the other study found that motivation and attitude were the best predictors of student's academic achievement (Hendricks, 1997). Besides that, Mahyuddin et al. (2009) also found a significant but low positive correlation between students' academic motivation and their academic achievement. Several studies have examined the relationship between grades and cognitive ability and it is clearly indicate that there is a positive correlation between these two factors (Mathiasen (1984); Mouw and Khanna (1993); Passons (1967); Schneider and Overton (1983); Wolfe and Johnson (1995)). Cognitive ability is one of the important factors that can affect the students' achievement (Ackerman and Heggestad, 1997) however Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnam (2006) noted that cognitive ability alone is insufficient for student to success in academic. Thus, researchers have sought to identify non-cognitive predictors of academic achievement, including variables related to personality dispositions. Rather, their concern is with the most recent theoretical approach to study of personality traits and academic achievement based on the Big Five of personality traits (Costa et al., 2006). Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of one non-cognitive predictor of academic achievement which is personality and this Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 148

2 research more focus on Big Five personality traits on student's academic achievement. Based on the recent empirical literature on individual study, the correlations between these two factors were combined in meta-analysis. 2. Big Five personality factors and academic achievement In psychology, the Big Five factors of personality can be described as the five dimensions of personality that is used to describe the human personality. The Big Five personalities are Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Koning et al. (2012) conducted a study on student characteristics and academic achievement and found that GPA has a strong positive relation with personality traits Conscientiousness. It is consistent with research findings on first-year performance in higher education studied by O'Connor and Paunonen (2007). While the other Big Five personality traits only weak and inconsistent related to academic achievement which is line with prior studies from Poropat (2009). The correlation among GPA, vocabulary, personality, and time management for all 556 students was examined by MacCann et al. (2012). In his study, he reports group differences for all variables by enrollment status (part- versus full-11 time), sex and age and it was found that age was significantly correlated with time management, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. It means that the older students tended to score higher on all three variables. Besides that, he also revealed that of the Big Five personality traits, Conscientiousness implement more effective in time management practices, which allow them to succeed academically. This finding replicates the work of McKenzie and Gow (2004). About 308 undergraduate students was completed the Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) and the Academic Motivations Scale (AMS) and their college Grade Point Average (GPA) was reported. The result was shown that intrinsic motivation to accomplish (individuals tend to have an internal locus of control) and GPA was partially mediated by Conscientiousness. It clearly shown that the combination of intrinsic motivation and Conscientiousness become the strongest predictor of GPA (Komarraju et al., 2011). Lounsbury et al. (2003) studied the relationship between general intelligence, Big Five personalities and a measure of work drive to course grade measured by GPA in undergraduate psychology course among 175 students. The correlation analyses were found that there is a positive relationship between Conscientiousness and Openness and GPA in a psychology course. This result mirrored to Paunonen and Ashton (2001). De Raad and Schouwenburg (1996) suggested that Big Five factors of Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience are most relevant in educational setting and each of these factors were positively correlated with academic success and contrast to Neuroticism. This was supported by Duff et al. (2004) study on the relationship between personalities, approach to learning and academic performance measured as a composite measure, a grade point average (GPA) achieved over the course of an academic year. 3. Methodology 3.1 Meta-Analysis A meta-analysis refers to analysis of analyses where the result from different studies was mathematically combined (Glass, 1976). That is referring to the statistical analysis of large collection of analysis results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating the findings. Over 64 journals from different disciplines such as business, education, psychology, ecology, medical and statistics that have been review, only six were fulfill the criteria and included in this study. Table 3.1 summarized the correlation between Big Five personalities and students academic achievement (GPA) reported by papers that met criteria for this study. Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 149

3 Table 3.1: Summary of studies reporting correlations between Big Five personality and students academic achievement Sample Measure size Correlation Study Big Five Personalities Academic Acheivement n N E O A C Koning et al. (2012) FFPI GPA MacCann et al. (2012) IPIP GPA Komarraju et al. (2011) NEO-FFI GPA Kappe and Flier (2010) NEO-FFI GPA Duff et al. (2004) 16PFi GPA Lounsbury ey al. (2003) PSI GPA Note. N=Neuroticism; E=Extraversion; O=Openness to experience; A=Agreeableness; C=Conscientiousness; GPA=Grade point average; FFPI=Five Factor Personality Inventory; IPIP=International Personality Item Pool; NEO-FFI=Five Factor Inventory; 16PFi=Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire; PSI=Personal Style Inventory 3.2 Hunter and Schmidt (1990) bare bones" Approach This meta-analysis study measured the common effect size of correlation, r. When the studies met the criteria for inclusion in this meta-analysis study, a combination of correlation value between Big Five personalities and GPA can be computed by using Hunter and Schmidt (1990) approach. This approach also had been used in the previous meta-analysis study about the correlations between variables (Robbins et al. (2004); Francis et al. (1991) and Linden et al. (2010)). The basic idea in Hunter and Schmidt (1990) is to estimate the variability of the distribution of effect sizes (correlation). In this approach, the total variance of observed study outcomes is estimated, and the variance due to artifacts such as sampling error, reliability of measurement and range restriction is subtracted to yield a residual variance. In the Hunter and Schmidt (1990) bare bones" approach, only sampling error is considered as a sources of artifactual variance and this estimated value is consider as the estimates sampling variance for a meta-analysis. 3.3 Heterogeneity Statistic Heterogeneity in meta-analysis refers to the variation in study outcomes between studies. There is a variation among the studies since the sample from each study are not taken from the same population. Thus, a statistical heterogeneity would exist and the sample estimates would differ substantially. An index of heterogeneity, I 2 can be defined by using Higgins and Thompson (2002) and Chi-squared heterogeneity statistic, Cochran s Q. Heterogeneity index, I 2 can be described as the percentage of variation across studies that are due to heterogeneity rather than chance hence Cochran s Q test measure heterogeneity among studies. If the statistical heterogeneity is presence, then random effect meta-analysis is performed. Random effect model allowed the true effect may vary from study to study. Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 150

4 4. Finding & Discussion 4.1 Variability Estimation In order to estimate the variability distribution of effect size by using Hunter and Schmidt (1990) bare bones" approach, the results across studies was accumulate. Table 4.1: The Hunter and Schmidt (1990) bare bone variability estimation Study Correlation N E O A C Koning et al. (2012) MacCann et al. (2012) Komarraju et al. (2011) Kappe and Flier (2010) Duff et al. (2004) Lounsbury ey al. (2003) Weight mean Observed variance Estimate variance Note. N=Neuroticism; E=Extraversion; O=Openness to experience; A=Agreeableness; C=Conscientiousness Table 4.1 summarized the correlation values between the Big Five personalities and students' academic achievement (GPA) of individual studies. Based on the correlation values above, each study provides a different correlations estimate of the underlying relationship with the population. However, Conscientiousness found to be positively correlates to GPA for each study. By involving the accumulation of correlation, r of the individual studies using the weight estimate, the largest observed variance is Conscientiousness (0.028) while the smallest one is Neuroticism (0.005). This indicates that there is a large variability of the correlation values for Conscientiousness among the studies. However, the estimate variance due to sampling error was shown that Conscientiousness (0.0017) is the smallest one followed by Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness and Extraversion. By implemented Hunter and Schmidt (1990) approach, it can be concluded that Conscientiousness is the best Big Five personalities that highly correlate with students' academic achievement since the basic idea of Hunter and Schmidt (1990) stated that the estimate variance due to sampling error can be used to estimate the distribution of the effect size. This result is consistent with the findings from Diseth (2003), Noftle and Robins (2007) and Poropat (2009). 4.2 Heterogeneity Statistic Since Conscientiousness was found to be the best component of Big Five personalities that highly contribute to students' academic achievement (GPA), further analysis done focus only on that component. A summary result for combination of individual studies based on the correlation between Conscientiousness and GPA is presented in Table 4.2. Table 4.2: Heterogeneity statistics of individual studies for the correlation between Conscientiousness and GPA Measurement Estimate Number of studies 6 Chi-squared heterogeneity Heterogeneity index Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 151

5 Based on Table 4.2, Cochran s Q (29.850) found higher than , the critical value for 5 degrees of freedom with 95% level of significance found in a Chi-square distribution table. Since the calculated Cochran s Q is higher than table s value, the null is rejected. So, there is an enough evidence to conclude that the studies were not similar. This indicates that there is a presence of heterogeneity between the individual studies. The index of heterogeneity defined by Higgins and Thompson (2002), I 2 is 83.25%. This finding was shown that Conscientiousness has high heterogeneity within studies. Thus, this study applied random effects models since the heterogeneity within studies present. In random effect models, the weights of each study were adjusted to get the values of an adjusted Chi-square heterogeneity and adjusted Higgins and Thompson (2002). The result is given in Table 4.3. Table 4.3: Random effect model of the correlation between Conscientiousness and GPA Measurement Estimate Constant value Chi-squared heterogeneity (adjusted) Heterogeneity index (adjusted) The summary table above clearly indicates that the value of adjusted Chi-square heterogeneity for a random sample (29.281) is still higher than (tabulated value) therefore the null hypothesis is rejected. This random effect models also represent that there is heterogeneity between the individual studies. The adjusted Higgins and Thompson for a random effect models is 82.92% and this random effect models also shown that there is a high heterogeneity for Conscientiousness between the individual studies in this meta-analysis. 4.3 Meta-Analysis Result The meta-analysis effects summary of the correlation between Conscientiousness and GPA for all individual studies are represented in Table 4.4. Table 4.4: The correlation meta-analysis result-statistics for each study Study Point estimate Standard error Variance Lower limit Upper limit Koning et al. (2012) MacCann et al. (2012) Komarraju et al. (2011) Kappe and Flier (2010) Duff et al. (2004) Lounsbury ey al. (2003) Effect Summary Table 4.4 include the correlation values as a point estimate, standard error, variances, confidence intervals for each study and the effect summary or pooled estimates for all studies. Since zero (no effect) is not included in the 95% confidence interval for all individual studies, it clearly indicates that there is a statistically significant difference in the effects of the correlations for all studies. Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 152

6 5. Conclusion and Future Recommendation 5.1 Conclusion This study was carried out to examine the relationship between the five higher order personality dimensions that is the Big Five personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness) and students' academic achievement (GPA). The data for this study is based on the recent empirical literatures that reported the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and GPA. This study was found that among that five dimensions of personality, Conscientiousness is the best dimension that are highly correlate to GPA by referring the estimate variability due to sampling error by Hunter and Schmidt (1990). Theoretically, this study is homogeneous in the context of measure the correlation between Big Five personality and GPA however in order to test the heterogeneity among the individual studies, Cochran's Q and Higgins and Thompson (2002), I 2 was used and found out that the studies are not similar and there is a high heterogeneity between Conscientiousness and GPA among all the individual studies. 5.2 Recommendation In order to increase the precision of the meta-analysis study, the number of studies should be increased. So that, the standard error of the weighted average correlation, weighted mean correlation will reduce. Hence, the confidence interval will become smaller. Therefore, to increase the number of studies, the scope of the study should become wider, not be limited to the Big Five personality traits and GPA only. References Abu-Bakar, K., Ahmad-Tarmizi, R., Mahyuddin, R., Elias, H., Luan, W. S. and Mohd-Ayub, A. F. (2010). Relationship between University Students' Achievement Motivation, Attitude and Academic Performance in Malaysia. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences Ackerman, P. L. and Heggestad, E. D. (1997). Intelligence, Personality and Interests: Evidence for Overlapping Traits. Psychological Bulletin 121: Chamorro-Premuzic, T. and Furnam, A. (2006). Intellectual Competence and the Intelligent Personality: A Third Way in Differential Psychology. Review of General Psychology 10: Costa, P. T., Jr. and McCrae, R. R. (2006). Revised NOE Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-factor Inventory (NEO-FFI): Professional Manual. Psychological Assessment Resources. De Raad, B. and Schouwenburg, H. C. (1996). Personality Traits in Learning and Education. European Journal of Personality 10: Diseth, A. (2003). Personality and Approaches to Learning as Predictors of Academic Achievement. European Journal of Personality 17: Duff, A., Boyle, E., Dunleavy, K. and Ferguson, J. (2004). The Relationship between Personality, Approach to Learning and Academic Performance. Personality and Individual differences 36: Francis, J. M., Steven, J. S. and Terry, L. C. (1991). Understanding Mail Survey Response Behaviour: A Meta Analysis. American Association for Public Opinion Research 55: Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 153

7 Hendricks, A. B. (1997). Predicting Student Success with the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory. Unpublished Master's thesis. Higgins, J. P. T. and Thompson, S. G. (2002). Quantifying Heterogeneity in a Meta-analysis. Statistics in Medicine 21: Higgins, J. P. T., Thompson, S. G., Deeks, J. J. and Altman, D. G. (2003). Measuring Inconsistency in Meta-analysis. British Medical Journal 327: Hunter, J. E. and Schmidt, F. L. (1990). Methods of Meta-analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings. Sage Kappe, R. and Flier, H. (2010). Using Multiple and Specific Criteria to Assess the Predictive Validity of the Big Five Personality Factors on Academic Performance. Journal of Research in Personality 44: Komarraju, M., Karau, S. J., Schmeck, R. R. and Advic, A. (2011). The Big Five Personality Traits, Learning Styles and Academic Achievement. Personality and Individual Differences 51: Koning, B. B., Loyens, S. M. M., Rikers, R. M. J. P., Smeets, G. and Molen, H. T. (2012). Generation Psy: Student Characteristics and Academic Achievement in a Three-year Problem-based Learning Bachelor Program. Learning and Individual Differences 22: Linden, D. D., Nijenhuis, J. T. and Bakker, A. B. (2010). Understanding Mail Survey Response Behaviour: A Meta Analysis. Journal of Research in Personality 44: Lounsbury, J. W., Sundstorm, E., Loveland, J. M. and Gibson, L. W. (2003). Intelligence, "Big Five" Personality Traits, and Work Drive as Predictors of Course Grade. Personality and Individual Differences 35: MacCann, C., Fogarty, G. J. and Robert, R. D. (2012). Strategy for Success in Education: Time Management is more Important for Part-time and Full-time Community College Students. Learning and Individual Differences. Mahyuddin, R., Elias, H. and Nordin, N. (2009). Emotional Intelligence, Achievement Motivation and Academic Achievement among Students of the Public and Private Higher Institutions. The International journal of Diversity in Organistions, Communities and Nations 9 (4): Mathiasen, R. E. (1984). Predictiong College Academic Achievement. College student Journal 18: McKenzie, K. and Gow, K. (2004). Exploring the First Year Academic Achievement of School Leavers and Mature-age Students through Structual Equation Modelling. Learning and Individual Differences 14: Mouw, J. T. and Khanna, R. K. (1993). Prediction of academic success: a review of the literature and some recomendations. College student Journal 27: Noftle, E. E. and Robins, R. W. (2007). Personality Predictors of Academic Outcomes: Big Five Correlates of GPA and SAT scores. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 93 (1): Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 154

8 O'Connor, M. and Paunonen, S. V. (2007). Big Five Personality Predictors of Post-secondary Academic Performance. Personality and Individual Differences 43: Passons, W. R. (1967). Predictive Validities of ACT, SAT, and High School Grades for First Semester GPA and Freshmen Courses. Educational and Psychological Measument 27: Paunonen, S. V. and Ashton, M. C. (2001). Big Five Predictors of Academic Achievement. Journal of Research in Personality 35: Poropat, A. E. (2009). A Meta-analysis of the Five-factor Model of Personality and Academic Performance. Psychology Bulletin 135: Robbins, S. B., Lauver, K., Le, H., Davis, D., Langley, R. and Carlstrom, A. (2004). Do Psycosocial and Study Skill Factors Predict College Outcomes? A Meta-Analyses. Psychological Bulletin 130 (2): Schneider, L. F. and Overton, T. D. (1983). Holland Personality Types and Academic Achievement. Journal of Counseling Psychology 30 (2): Wolfe, R. N. and Johnson, S. D. (1995). Personality as a Predictor of College Performance. Educational and Psychological Measurement 55 (2): Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, MALAYSIA. Organized by 155