Browsing by Author "Mouton, Sonica"

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    An investigation into the first and second -order factor structure of the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI)
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12) Mouton, Sonica; Theron, Callie C.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Industrial Psychology.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Due to our free market economy, it has become immensely important for organisations in the 21st century to utilise scarce resources as optimally as possible to ensure a lucrative place in the market as well as to ensure maximum profits. In other words, organisations must focus on competing effectively in terms of innovation, flexibility, cost, service and quality. This can however only happen if the right people with the right skills who can perform their jobs the best are employed. It is for this reason that human resource management becomes crucial as it contributes to an organisation’s success, through the acquisition and maintenance of a high quality and competent work force, as well as to ensure the effective and efficient use of human talent in a manner that will add value to an organisation. Personnel selection is one of the critical interventions used to regulate the movement of human capital into, through and out of the organisation. To enable Human Resource Practitioners/Industrial and Organisational Psychologists to make more informed decisions, assessment measures are used. However, to make accurate predictions, construct valid and reliable information pertaining to the predictor constructs is needed, as this is necessary to make accurate predictions of the criterion construct. Personality represents an influential determinant of job performance. The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) is a new personality questionnaire developed specifically for use in South Africa for amongst other personnel selection. The primary objective of this research is to evaluate the construct validity of the SAPI by evaluating the fit of both the first-and second-order measurement models of the SAPI through a confirmatory factor analytic investigation on a relatively large sample of the South African working population. The data that was used in this study was obtained from the data archives of the SAPI project, with written permission from the intellectual property holders, to utilise the sample data for the purpose of this research. Questionnaires were completed by a non-probability sample of participants from a variety of industries. The total sample size comprised of 3912 respondents. Item and dimensionality analyses were performed on the 20 subscales of the final version of the SAPI as set out by the scoring key. This was done to assess the extent to which the subscales represented the underlying personality constructs. In the item analysis no items were identified as seriously problematic. Results from the dimensionality analysis showed that 11 of the 20 personality dimension measures were compatible with the position that the items comprising these subscales measure what they are designed to measure. In contrast, nine out of the 20 subscales failed the uni-dimensionality test. A wide array of goodness-of-fit statistics was used to analyse the first order measurement model fit. The measurement model’s overall fit was acceptable. The null hypothesis of exact fit was rejected but the null hypothesis of close fit could not be rejected (p>.05). The fit indices reflected a close fit in the parameter and a very good model fit in the sample. The factor loadings, although statistically significant were generally also of a moderate to high degree. All of the completely standardised factor loadings fell above the critical cut-off value of .50. This would suggest that the item parcels do represent the latent personality dimensions they were designed to reflect acceptably well. Discriminant validity was also investigated. The results showed that SAPI, regardless of some difficulty, permit the successful discrimination between the distinctive aspects of the latent personality dimensions. The SAPI’s second order measurement model did not successfully converge. As a result inferences could not be made about the fit of the second order measurement model or the statistical significance and magnitude of the freed measurement model parameter estimates. Overall, this study contributed to the understanding of the psychometric properties of the SAPI. Its findings should guide and assist in eliciting the necessary further research needed to establish the psychometric credentials of SAPI as a valuable assessment instrument that can be used with confidence in South Africa. Recommendations for future research are made.