Personality, assessment methods and academic performance
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Personality, assessment methods and academic performance Adrian Furnham • Sarah Nuygards • Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Received: 25 March 2011 / Accepted: 31 December 2012 / Published online: 6 January 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This study examines the relationship between personality and two different academic performance (AP) assessment methods, namely exams and coursework. It aimed to examine whether the relationship between traits and AP was consistent across selfreported versus documented exam results, two different assessment techniques and across different faculties. There were 1,013 (622 female) university students from four British Universities in four faculties namely arts/humanities, social sciences, life/biological sciences and mathematical sciences. Participants completed a brief version of the Big Five inventory and a self-report measure of AP. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were the strongest personality predictors of AP. Structural equation model showed that sex and personality effects on AP were invariant across different areas of study or degree types (humanities, social sciences, life sciences and hard sciences). Personality variables are stable, robust and predictable correlates and determinants of AP. Conscientiousness, Openness and Agreeableness were positive predictors as measured by good grades whilst Neuroticism and Extraversion were correlates of weaker performance. Implications of these results refer how teachers choose to examine their pupils and to what extent students choose courses because of their known examination procedures. Keywords Personality Big Five Academic performance University assessment methods Gender GPA Assessment methods (AM) Accurate, fair, efficient student assessment is an issue of central concern in higher education for students and their teachers. Changes in the use of different AM have given rise to the increasing number of universities that are shifting from traditional examinations to A. Furnham (&) T. Chamorro-Premuzic Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Nuygards Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK
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continuous (coursework) (Heywood 2000). Coursework can take many different forms from large scale dissertation projects to short written assignments. They differ from exams where knowledge or skill is tested for a very specific period of time. Moreover, it has been widely acknowledged that the chosen AM will determine the style and content of student learning and skill acquisition (Heywood 2000). As a consequence, AM are increasingly designed to measure understanding rather than memory/knowledge and to influence and shape the ways students learn (Brown and Glasner 2003). This may explain the increased reliance on coursework AM (and thus, the reduced reliance on exams) as this type of AM in contrast with traditional examinations, effectively measures high
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