The Five-Factor Model, forced-choice personality inventories and performance: A comprehensive meta-analysis of academic and occupational validity studies

Abstract

This article reports a comprehensive meta-analysis of the criterion-oriented validity of the Big Five personality dimensions assessed with forced-choice (FC) inventories. Six criteria (i.e., performance ratings, training proficiency, productivity, grade-point average, global occupational performance, and global academic performance) and three types of FC scores (i.e., normative, quasi-ipsative, and ipsative) served for grouping the validity coefficients. Globally, the results showed that the Big Five assessed with FC measures have similar or slightly higher validity than the Big Five assessed with single-stimulus (SS) personality inventories. Quasi-ipsative measures of conscientiousness (K = 44, N = 8794, ρ = .40) are found to be better predictors of job performance than normative and ipsative measures. FC inventories also showed similar reliability coefficients to SS inventories. Implications of the findings for theory and practice in academic and personnel decisions are discussed, and future research is suggested.

Keywords:

• Five-Factor model
• Forced-choice
• Meta-analysis
• Performance
• Personality

Acknowledgments

We thank Neil Anderson, Dave Bartram, Lew Goldberg, Robert Hogan, Tim Judge, Kevin Murphy, Frank Schmidt, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on a previous version of this manuscript. The research reported in this article was partially supported by Grant SEJ-2008-3070 from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain) and Grant PSI2011-27947 from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness to Jesús F. Salgado