PSY391: Individual Differences and Performance – Research Assignment Instructions
Word limit: 2250 words, not including end-text references and appendix.
Note: Please do not exceed the word limit – your marker will stop marking
your answers at the word limit, and further content will not be assessed.
Referencing Style: APA7.
Formatting: 12pt Times New Roman, double line spacing, no additional spaces between
paragraphs.
Note: Pages documents cannot be uploaded to LMS. Please convert them to
.docx, .doc, or .pdf before submitting.
Total marks: 40.
Outline
Based on your results from completing the 120-item IPIP (Maples, Guan, Carter, & Miller, 2014)
representative of the NEO-PI-R domains of personality, this research assignment asks you to
complete a review of your results and their potential implications based on findings from published
literature.
There are three major questions to be answered as part this assignment.
1. Using your PSY391 peers as a point of comparison, what do your scores on the 120-item IPIP
by Maples et al. (2014) suggest about the five major trait domains of your personality?
When answering this question, please address the following as part of your answer:
• Provide a standardised statistical indicator (e.g., a Z score) for each of your five domain
scores that allows you to describe how much higher, lower, or approximately average
you are on each trait domain in comparison to your PSY391 peers.
o Hint: You can treat the PSY391 peer data as population data when calculating
your Z score. A formula to calculate population Z scores can be easily googled.
• Based on your IPIP scores, describe what traits for each domain would be more or less
characteristic of you in comparison to your peers in the unit.
• Based on your IPIP scores and their implications for your personality traits described
above, how accurately does this correspond with how you see yourself in comparison to
your peers? Provide examples for each domain to substantiate your answer.
• Provide a Figure or Figures in your Appendix that demonstrates the distribution of the
PSY391 cohort on each domain, and where your score sits on the distribution for each
domain.
2. Based on findings from published academic literature, what do your scores on the five
personality trait domains suggest about your predicted academic performance at university?
When answering this question, please address the following as part of your answer:
• Provide a concise summary of the academic literature that has addressed the five
personality domains and their expected relationships with tertiary academic
performance.
• Based on your perceptions of your academic performance, do your IPIP results support
the predicted relationships between personality traits and academic performance?
Provide examples to substantiate your answer for the relevant trait domains.
3. What validity considerations are important when looking at the relationship between your
personality domain scores and their predictions about your academic performance?
When answering this question, please address the following as part of your answer:
• What aspects of validity may impede or strengthen the accuracy of your trait domain
scores as predictors of academic performance? Provide examples to substantiate how
these aspects of validity may be directly relevant to the accuracy of these relationships.
Format
• Please number your answers in your assignment (e.g., 1., 2., 3.) to make it clear to your marker
which question you are addressing. You do not need to include the questions themselves in
your assignment, but including the question numbers is important for clarity.
• You do not need to provide an abstract, or a general introduction and discussion, wrapped
around the answers you provide to the questions on the previous page, as this assignment is
not formatted like a laboratory report.
• Students should address each of the previous questions in a short answer format (i.e., using
paragraphs to directly answer the questions), referring to published academic literature where
appropriate (i.e., whenever you are referring to the work of another author).
• Use citations where appropriate per APA6/APA7 style.
• Writing succinctly, and directly addressing the components of each question, is highly
recommended.
• Include Figure/s following your References in an Appendix section. Tables should not be
included in this assignment as they are outside of the scope of what the questions are asking.
Marking Rubric
A demonstration version of the rubric used to mark your research assignment is available on LMS.
Questions?
Please feel free to ask questions you may have about the written assignment on the LMS discussion
boards for this unit – there is a sub-forum already set up and awaiting queries.
References
Maples, J. L., Guan, L., Carter, N. T., & Miller, J. D. (2014). A test of the International Personality Item
Pool representation of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and development of a 120-
item IPIP-based measure of the Five-Factor Model. Psychological Assessment, 26(4), 1070-
1084. doi:10.1037/pas0000004
You may find browsing through the information available on the IPIP website (http://ipip.ori.org)
useful when working on this assignment.
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