Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-53).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Liberty University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

M.A. / Psychological assessment is in a crisis in South Africa. Many local and imported inventories currently in use have not been tested for bias and have not been cross-culturally validated (Foxcroft, Roodt, & Abrahams, 2005). Others show various psychometric problems, such as low reliability and inappropriateness for previously disadvantaged groups (e.g. Meiring, Van de Vijver, Rothmann, & Barrick, 2005). The theoretical models on which these inventories are based were developed in the Western context ignoring South Africa’s multilingual and multicultural society. This may have resulted in inadequate selection of job applicants in organisational settings, and improper assessments of clients in the education and healthcare sectors. In order to make assessment suitable for the entire South African population, the development of indigenous theories, constructs and inventories that are valid for all cultural groups is therefore urgently needed. The present study aimed at the construction and validation of an indigenous Emotional Stability scale. Its development was based on the qualitatively derived Emotional Stability cluster of the SAPI1 (South African Personality Inventory), a project initiated in 2006 to develop a personality instrument, which is locally derived from indigenous conceptions of personality in all 11 official languages. The Emotional Stability cluster consists of six subclusters and 25 facets comprising person-descriptive terms, indicating positive and negative psychological adjustment. These person-descriptive terms were used to create a definition of the meaning of each facet for all languages ensuring coverage of the whole construct. Items were generated to represent these definitions. The final inventory consisted of a single list of 326 items, which was presented to a second year undergraduate psychology student sample, attending a course in personality psychology (N = 610). Participants also completed the Neuroticism scale of the Basic Traits Inventory (BTI, Taylor & De Bruin, 2006) and the items of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS, Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988) to allow for external validation of the indigenous Emotional Stability scale. Factor analyses indicated that the positive and negative facets of the Emotional Stability cluster defined separate factors, which led to the exclusion of the positive facets, resulting in the scale measuring only those personality characteristics typically attributed to Neuroticism. To denote the difference, the final scale was renamed “indigenous Neuroticism scale”. Three comparison groups were formed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the indigenous Neuroticism scale across language groups, namely: Germanic (English and Afrikaans), Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele), and Sotho (Sepedi, Sesotho and Setswana). The results of the present study revealed a valid and reliable, multifaceted indigenous measure of Neuroticism. The Neuroticism factor consists of five facets, namely Despaired, Anxious, Dependent, Temperamental, and Impulsive. Factor congruence of the indigenous Neuroticism factor across all language groups assessed was demonstrated, indicating that the dimension Neuroticism has the same psychological meaning across all groups. Tucker’s phi obtained for the factor Neuroticism for each language group was: Germanic (pxy = 1.00), Nguni (pxy = 1.00) and Sotho (pxy = .99).

[No abstract submitted] / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to: (1) analyze the value of subtest items in discriminating between bright, average, dull normal, borderline, and mentally defective groups; and (2) indicate the rank order of difficulty in the total population for each item.

Extensive research has been conducted in the area of intelligence. Most of the research in this area has been focused on cognitive abilities. However, little research has been explored other type of intelligence and the environmental factors. The intent of this study was to investigate Sternberg’s Theory of Intelligence and parental involvement. According to this theory an individual’s intelligence is composed of three main domains: cognitive, creative and practical. Every individual possesses these abilities to a greater or lesser degree. Yet, little is known of what factors could lead to the difference in these types of abilities in individuals. Parental involvement was used in this study as the independent variable. The main question this research sought to answer was whether parental involvement would have an effect on these types of abilities. It was hypothesized that individuals with less parental involvement would score have higher creative and practical abilities. On the other hand, individuals with greater parental involvement would have higher cognitive abilities. The result did not indicate that parental involvement had an effect on these types of abilities. However, it was found that females reported more parental involvement than males. In addition, males score higher on the cognitive and practical subtest. Although, the results were not significant in the study. I believe is still of great interest to understand what environmental factors could be responsible for these types of abilities.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.