Personality predictors of job performance for industrial temporary employees

In light of recent research supporting the use of personality measures to predict job performance and in view of the paucity of research on personality predictors of success for temporary employees, the current study investigated the use of personality measures with industrial temporary employees. Through job analysis, two personality factors emerged that may serve as predictors of success for industrial temporary workers: Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. A work-contextualized personality measure, the Temporary Employee Inventory (TEI), was created to measure these personality dimensions. In a predictive validation study, the TEI was administered to 67 industrial temporary employees and was correlated with supervisor ratings of job performance. The TEI demonstrated a correlation with overall job performance (r.30, p\u3c.05). The individual scale of Conscientiousness also correlated significantly with overall job performance (r=.32, p\u3c.05) and displayed significant correlations with all dimensions of job performance except Relations With Others. While the individual scale of Agreeableness yielded non-zero correlations with overall job performance and with all dimensions of job performance, these correlations were not statistically significant at the .05 level. This study supports prior research that has found personality to be a modest predictor of job performance and has added to the current body of research by exploring the use of personality measures in the context of temporary employment. This study\u27s findings are preliminary in nature and more research is needed in order to reach more sound conclusions with regard to the use of personality assessment to predict the job performance of industrial temporary employees

An Investigation of the Construct Validity of the Big Five Construct of Emotional Stability in Relation to Job Performance, Job Satisfaction, and Career Satisfaction

The present study examined the Big Five dimension of Emotional Stability and explored its relationship to work outcomes. Six archival data sets were used. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between the Big Five dimensions of personality and job performance, job satisfaction, and career satisfaction. Results demonstrated that all Big Five personality dimensions were significantly, positively related to job performance, job satisfaction, and career satisfaction. Additionally, part correlations between Emotional Stability and job performance, job satisfaction, and career satisfaction were calculated controlling for the other Big Five dimensions of Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness. Emotional Stability demonstrated unique variance, continuing to have a significant, positive correlation with all criteria. In order to examine how Emotional Stability is related to job performance, job satisfaction, and career satisfaction in jobs with varying stress levels, data sets were sorted by job categories and Spearman Rank Order Correlations were calculated between job stress measures and Emotional Stability-Criteria correlations. No significant results were found. Emotional Stability mean scores were also compared for job categories using one-way ANOVA and independent groups t-tests. Individuals in jobs that were considered “high stress” had higher mean scores on Emotional Stability. In addition to supporting previous research findings, this study contributed unique information by demonstrating that Emotional Stability contributes unique information to the prediction of job outcomes

Monolingual Bias in Second Language Acquisition Research

This paper questions whether second language (L2) acquisition research lives up to its claim to deal with the learner’s language as an independent system. First the paper describes the original assumption that learners have independent grammars and sees whether the terminology of L2 acquisition research fits with this. Then it measures some typical L2 research methodologies against this assumption. It argues that the independence of the L2 user is a necessary tenet for L2 acquisition research that has to be properly accommodated within the field, adopting the practice of bilingualism research

Writing Systems Research: A new journal for a developing field.

Overview of the scope of a new journal.This article introduces the birth of a journal, Writing Systems Research, and what it will cover

The Social Determinants of Health:Time to Re-Think?

Twelve years have now passed since the influential WHO Report on the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) in 2008. A group of senior international public health scholars and decision-makers met in Italy in mid-2019 to review the legacy of the SDoH conceptual framework and its adequacy for the many challenges facing our field as we enter the 2020s. Four major categories of challenges were identified: emerging "exogenous" challenges to global health equity, challenges related to weak policy and practice implementation, more fundamental challenges related to SDoH theory and research, and broader issues around modern research in general. Each of these categories is discussed, and potential solutions offered. We conclude that although the SDoH framework is still a worthy core platform for public health research, policy, and practice, the time is ripe for significant evolution

Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English

An experiment investigated whether Japanese speakers’ categorisation of objects and substances as shape or material is influenced by acquiring English, based on Imai and Gentner (1997). Subjects were presented with an item such as a cork pyramid and asked to choose between two other items that matched it for shape (plastic pyramid) or for material (piece of cork). The hypotheses were that for simple objects the number of shape-based categorisations would increase according to experience of English and that the preference for shape and material-based categorisations of Japanese speakers of English would differ from mono¬lingual speakers of both languages. Subjects were 18 adult Japanese users of English who had lived in English-speaking countries between 6 months and 3 years (short-stay group), and 18 who had lived in English-speaking countries for 3 years or more (long-stay group). Both groups achieved above criterion on an English vocabulary test. Results were: both groups preferred material responses for simple objects and substances but not for complex objects, in line with Japanese mono¬linguals, but the long-stay group showed more shape preference than the short-stay group and also were less different from Americans. These effects of acquiring a second language on categorisation have implications for conceptual representation and methodology

Assessing Future Resilience, Equity, and Sustainability in Scenario Planning

In the absence of strong international agreements, many municipal governments are leading efforts to build resilience to climate change in general and to extreme weather events in particular. However, it is notoriously difficult to guide and activate processes of change in complex adaptive systems such as cities. Participatory scenario planning with city professionals and members of civil society provides an opportunity to coproduce positive visions of the future. Yet, not all visions are created equal. In this chapter, we introduce the Resilience, Equity, and Sustainability Qualitative (RESQ) assessment tool that we have applied to compare positive scenario visions for cities in the USA and Latin America. We use the tool to examine the visions of the two desert cities in the Urban Resilience to Extreme Events Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN), which are Hermosillo (Mexico) and Phoenix (United States)