Employees’ Predispositions to Routinised Work: Measurement Issues

We dream of a job that makes us most productive, comfortable and satisfied. But often we focus on salary, job status and ignore the mismatch between job requirements and our psychophysiological predisposition. In the long run can pay the high costs of the mismatch, so the measurement of employees’ psychophysiological predispositions is a crucial problem. In the first part of the paper we examine the definition of basic concepts: the job’s predisposition and degree of work routinization. The second part of the paper addresses the problems of questionnaire measurement on example of 3 questionnaires: NEOFFI, SSA, Gallup’s Clifton StrengthsFinder Assessment. In the empirical part we present the results of measurement of the 2 predispositions (METICULOUSNESS and ADAPTABILITY) important for prediction psychophysiological costs in performing the highly routinized work. The analyses of the data (N = 1132 employees of different corporations + 4748 colleagues of theirs) have shown: (1) the necessity of eliminating distortions related to the response style by data ipsatization; (2) the significant differences in ADAPTABILITY and METICULOUSNESS between self vs. other -descriptions; (3) the negative relationship between ADAPTABILITY and METICULOUSNESS scores

The Item-Number Distortion Effect in Rank Order Testing: An Example Using the Clifton Strengthsfinder Inventory

A possible distortion effect in tests that use (a) forced-choice ipsative scaling and (b) different numbers of items to determine categorical representation was investigated. It was proposed that the greater the number of items used to determine representation in a category, the lower the likelihood that category will be selected. The Clifton StrengthsFinder questionnaire, in which responses to 177 items are used to determine which of 34 talent themes are respondents' top five “Signature Themes,” was examined to ascertain whether or not the aforementioned distortion effect affected test results. Analysis of 1,198,645 completions of the questionnaire provided confirmatory evidence for the distortion effect. These findings call into question the trustworthiness of the Clifton StrengthsFinder questionnaire and any test that uses a similar design format.

Defining Levels of Learning for Strengths Development Programs in Pharmacy

The Clifton StrengthsFinder™ is an online measure of personal talent that identifies where an individual's greatest potential for building strengths exists. This paper describes a framework for strengths education in pharmacy which includes introductory, intermediate and advanced levels of learning. The use of the StrengthsFinder™ assessment and supporting workshops aids student pharmacists, pharmacy residents and practitioners in identifying and refining their talents and connecting talents to roles in the profession. Additional learning strategies support a learner's progression to intermediate and advanced levels of learning, which focus on the application of strengths in teams, leadership, and organizational development. By articulating and recognizing levels of learning around strengths-related content and skills, strong instructional design is fostered. Optimal design includes development of a sequence of learning opportunities delivered over time, a roll-out plan and consideration of the instructional resources required.