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Abstract
Occupational science has held a peripheral interest in the role personality traits may serve in influencing people's engagement in occupation. Like occupation, personality has been identified as a significant factor in explaining personal well-being within the social sciences. Recent models implicate personality, personal projects or life tasks, and personal narrative as three essential layers for understanding human experience. The present study explored how personality traits are related to meaningful occupation and occupational value (two complementary perspectives on occupational experience) and to well-being. In a sample of 224 undergraduate and graduate students from a Mountain-West university in the USA, measures of the Big Five personality traits, life satisfaction and meaning in life were evaluated in relation to the Engagement in Meaningful Activities Survey (EMAS) and the Occupational Value Assessment with Predefined Items (OVal-pd). This study demonstrated that personality variables help to explain variance within the EMAS and OVal-pd, and measures of well-being. However, meaningful occupation and occupational value were the single most significant variables explaining life satisfaction and meaning in life in their respective regression models. The findings of this study add to the knowledge base of occupational science by showing that personality traits likely influence, but do not define, perceptions of meaningful occupation and occupational value; and occupational meaning and occupational value are useful constructs for exploring the influence of occupation upon personal well-being.
