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Abstract
This study examines the extent to which personality traits and intelligence scores predict school level academic performance (AP), (British
GCSE: General Certificate of Secondary Education; America Grade 10) in different disciplines. The participant sample consisted of approximately
250 school pupils from three schools in the South East of England. A series of hierarchical regressions were performed with participant disciplinespecific subject grades being the criterion variable and demographic, as well and intelligence and personality test scores, the predictor variables.
For overall grade intelligence accounted for a fifth of the variance and personality an incremental validity of 8%. Whilst a combination of
intelligence, personality and sex accounted for around a quarter of the variance in all four core subjects the pattern was rather different for elected
subjects. The results are discussed in terms of the usefulness of psychometric assessments of candidates at selection.
2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Personality traits; Intelligence; School grades; Academic performance
1. Introduction
There has been much controversy concerning which individual difference variables can, and should, be used to assess a
person's success or failure in academic performance (AP)
(Gottfredson, 2003; Wolfe, 1972). There is currently ample
evidence that measures of intelligence are effective predictors of
academic performance across educational settings (ChamorroPremuzic & Furnham, 2005). An individual's personality can
also influence how capable they are in accumulating and
processing information (Barratt, 1995; Barrick & Mount, 1996;
Blickle, 1996) which, in turn, predicts how they score on ability
tests.
Recent studies have specifically shown that there may be a
significant relationship between personality and intelligence,
and how they can predict a range of academic outcomes
(Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003a,b, 2004, 2005;
Farsides & Woodfield, 2003). Much of the research has shown
the link between personality and AP in university settings.
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: a.furnham@ucl.ac.uk (A. Furnham).
1041-6080/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2008.02.001
29
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Table 1
Distribution of results for each subject (grades A to F)
Subject
English Language
English Literature
French
Geography
German
History
IT
Maths
Religion
Science
265
264
169
109
105
128
214
266
144
264
6.0
21.9
16.5
8.2
19.0
14.8
10.2
18.7
6.9
13.2
40.2
36.2
29.4
40.0
28.1
43.0
27.0
32.6
34.0
25.3
38.7
25.3
36.5
40.0
27.6
28.9
37.2
37.8
31.9
25.7
14.7
13.6
16.5
11.8
12.4
10.2
19.5
10.1
20.8
27.5
0.4
3.0
1.2
0
2.9
2.3
4.7
0.4
5.6
7.9
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.8
1.4
0.4
0.7
0.4
2.3. Procedure
The study was conducted under the supervision of teachers.
Participants completed personality and intelligence tests
approximately 4months before their exams. Participants were
subjected to a briefing prior to, and after, testing. This included
offering assurances about confidentiality and requesting their
participation. Data were matched up to school records of exams
by use of codes seen only by an Educational Psychologist.
Schools and pupils were later debriefed.
3. Results
3.1. Preliminary analyses
Preliminary analysis showed that the results from the nonselective school were very different from those of the selective
schools on nearly all criteria. Given the size of this sample they
were dropped from further analyses. Thus the N for most
analyses were around 250 but varied with missing data. Thus
only schools with a selective admission policy were retained
hence there may have been a range restriction in ability which
could possibly lead to an overstatement of the effects of
personality should they appear.
First, the distribution of personality and intelligence scores
were examined against population norms and seemed fine The
score for the Baddeley Reasoning Test was less normally
distributed with 40 students scoring very highly so that the
mean was over two standard deviations above the norm.
Because of this, limited use of the Baddeley test results was
made.
Table 1 shows the results from each subject specifying the
percentages of participants getting each of the various grades.
Participant grades were then intercorrelated (see Table 2).
English Language and Literature were highly significant r = .69
(N = 264, p b .001); and Maths and Science similarly (r = .68,
N = 265, p b .001). English Language was correlated r = .45
Table 2
Means, SDs and correlations between the major variables
Sex (S)
Wonderlic (W)
Baddeley (B)
Neuroticism (N)
Extraversion (E)
Openness (O)
Agreeableness (A)
Conscientiousness (C)
English Language (L)
English Literature (Lit)
Maths (M)
Science (Sc)
SD
Lit
25.50
36.89
35.01
40.72
35.09
37.67
39.11
5.36
5.60
5.57
5.21
5.81
7.78
6.79
4.72
5.40
5.24
4.16
0.82
1.06
0.98
1.18
.27
.46
.04
.12
.09
.11
.01
.44
.40
.17
.26
.45
.00
.17
.08
.16
.02
.41
.32
.41
.39
.00
.04
.01
.12
.02
.35
.34
.23
.32
.03
.00
.09
.13
.10
.12
.27
.18
.06
.07
.17
.24
.17
.17
.18
.04
.14
.01
.00
.07
.04
.03
.09
.02
.06
.09
.12
.17
.12
.16
.69
.45
.55
.39
.52
.68
Correlations were two tailed. Correlations N.12 were p b .05, those r N.17, p b 001.
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Table 3
Regression results for the compulsory subjects (N = 240)
English Language
English Literature
Maths
Beta
Beta
Beta
Wonderlic
Neuroticism
Extraversion
Openness
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Sex
.25
.08
.18
.00
.05
.13
.35
4.34
1.42
3.25
0.11
0.83
2.38
6.60
.18
.08
.14
.04
.03
.20
.34
2.89
1.31
2.40
0.64
0.43
3.36
5.64
Model
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
Wonderlic (IQ)
IQ + Personality
IQ + P + Sex
46.08
11.14
16.26
24.71
7.13
11.48
.16
.20
.30
Total
Beta
Beta
.39
.26
.14
.08
.03
.11
.04
6.53
4.53
2.36
1.34
0.53
1.87
0.60
.32
.14
.13
.01
.05
.19
.16
5.24
2.52
2.22
0.28
0.87
3.15
2.72
.34
.17
.18
.01
.04
.19
.25
5.99
3.21
3.26
0.23
0.80
3.43
4.53
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
54.49
15.85
13.60
.09
.13
.24
Science
45.92
12.04
11.67
.18
.27
.27
62.12
17.19
18.94
.16
.22
.24
.21
.29
.35
Table 4
Regression results for the elective subjects
French (N = 150)
History (N = 114)
Religion (N = 153)
Geography (N = 96)
German (N = 96)
Beta
Beta
Beta
Beta
Beta
Wonderlic
Neuroticism
Extraversion
Openness
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Sex
.27
.07
.15
.08
.08
.16
.05
3.13
0.83
1.86
0.97
1.00
1.98
0.58
.17
.31
.20
.01
.02
.23
.40
1.94
3.92
2.37
0.16
0.27
2.77
4.76
.12
.04
.21
.03
.01
.21
.21
1.40
0.45
2.49
0.37
0.15
2.46
2.39
.20
.12
.13
.02
.01
.32
.91
1.90
1.22
1.29
0.19
0.11
2.92
0.83
.21
.00
.09
.16
.07
.17
.13
1.92
0.01
0.82
1.52
0.68
1.53
1.30
Model
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
Adj. R2
Wonderlic (IQ)
IQ + Personality (P)
IQ + P + Sex
14.65
3.89
3.37
.08
.10
.10
1.47
4.83
8.23
.00
.17
.31
6.57
3.38
3.83
.04
.10
.13
6.64
3.63
3.08
.06
.14
.13
2.55
1.37
1.42
.02
.02
.03
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