Date of Graduation

5-2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (EdD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Advisor/Mentor

Michael T. Miller

Committee Member

Jenny Miles

Second Committee Member

Daniel Kissinger

Third Committee Member

Carl Holt

Keywords

Do What You Are personality inventory, comparative study, undergraduate students

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive/causal-comparative study was to determine if relationships existed between individual personality types as determined by the Do What You Are (DWYA) on-line personality inventory and gender, ethnicity, area of academic study, entering and exiting grade point averages (GPA), and time to degree completion of undergraduate students at the case study institution.

Data were collected over a six year period by the institution's career development center. The student respondents were undergraduates and were self-selected to take the inventory. The sample included 2, 533 undergraduate students surveyed between 2003 and 2007.

Statistical analysis utilized scores on the four continuous dimension scales on the personality inventory and other student demographic variables. Student scores on the DWYA served as the chief independent or predictor variable for all of the outcome variables.

The first and second research questions examined the descriptive information of the majority types in each of the academic areas. The third and fourth questions examined the relationship between personality type and undergraduate grade point averages of the respondents. The fifth question examined the relationship between personality type and the student's academic status (continuing, dropped, or graduated). The sixth question sought to find a correlation between personality type and the time to degree obtainment.

The four-way factorial ANOVA found one significant main effect interaction between the judging / perceiving dimension scale where judging types had a significantly higher mean GPA than perceiving types. ANOVA also discovered a significant two-way interaction between mean GPA's of the respondents and the extroversion/introversion scale and the thinking/feeling scale. Introverted thinkers had a higher mean GPA than extroverted thinkers. The Chi square statistic was found to be significant for feeling perceiving (FP) personality types (ENFP, ESFP, INFP, ISFP) and the dropout status.

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