Faculty of Education - Theses

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Relationships between extraversion, neuroticism, trait anxiety and trait curiosity

Dickie, Barrie T. (University of Melbourne, 1977)

Three personality scales measuring four constructs were administered to a group of 230 second year teachers' college students. The results of the testing were then submitted to correlational and factor analysis to investigate four hypotheses. These were: (i) that Trait Anxiety non-reversed items measured substantially the same construct as measured by E�senck's Neuroticism scale; (ii) that Trait Anxiety non-reversed items measured a different construct to that measured by Trait Anxiety reversed items; (iii) that Trait Curiosity non-reversed items measured a different construct to that measured by Trait Curiosity reversed items; (iv) that Trait Anxiety reversed was substantially the same construct as Trait Curiosity non-reversed. The analyses provided only equivocal support for hypothesis (i) and none at all, surprisingly, for the intuitively plausible hypothesis (iv). Hypotheses (i�) and (iii) received very strong support. The vexed question of the disappearance of the reversed item factors in the second order solution is raised. A case is argued that the phenomenon can be understood in statistical terms as an artifact of the analyses. Finally, a suggestion is made for a new relationship between personality theory and measurement.