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Big Five Personality Traits Predict Successful Transitions From School to Vocational Education and Training: A Large-Scale Study.

ABSTRACT: Educational transitions play a pivotal role in shaping educational careers, and ultimately social inequality. Whereas parental socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive ability have long been identified as key determinants of successful educational transitions, much less is known about the role of socio-emotional skills. To address this gap, the present study investigated whether Big Five personality traits predict success in the transition from secondary school to vocational education and training (VET) above and beyond SES, cognitive ability, and other covariates. Using data from Starting Cohort 4 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; N = 4,137), we defined seven indicators of successful transition: obtaining a VET position, number of acceptances for VET positions, starting a VET position, (the absence of) dropout intentions and actual dropout, final VET grade, and satisfaction with VET. The results revealed that some Big Five traits were incrementally associated with several indicators of transition success. Conscientiousness emerged as the single most relevant trait, predicting all the transition success indicators but 1 (dropout intentions). The other Big Five traits had much weaker and less consistent links with transition success. Extraversion predicted the final VET grade and obtaining a VET position; Agreeableness was linked to a higher risk of dropout. Openness and Emotional Stability had no incremental effects on transition success. There was also some evidence for both compensatory and synergistic interactive effects, with Openness moderating mainly the effects of parental SES (on dropout intentions, actual dropout, and number of acceptances), and Agreeableness moderating the effects of cognitive ability (on obtaining a VET position, number of acceptances, and satisfaction with VET). Although individual effect sizes were small, the Big Five's joint contribution to transition success was non-negligible, and often larger than that of sociodemographic characteristics and cognitive ability. Our results suggest a hitherto underappreciated contribution of personality to successful transitions to VET.

SUBMITTER: Nießen D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7438771 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Big Five Personality Traits Predict Successful Transitions From School to Vocational Education and Training: A Large-Scale Study.

Nießen Désirée D Danner Daniel D Spengler Marion M Lechner Clemens M CM

Frontiers in psychology 20200731

Educational transitions play a pivotal role in shaping educational careers, and ultimately social inequality. Whereas parental socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive ability have long been identified as key determinants of successful educational transitions, much less is known about the role of socio-emotional skills. To address this gap, the present study investigated whether Big Five personality traits predict success in the transition from secondary school to vocational education and traini ...[more]

PMID: 32903700

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Empathy promotes positive physician-patient communication and is associated with improved patient satisfaction, treatment adherence and clinical outcomes. It has been suggested that personality traits should be taken into consideration in programs designed to enhance empathy in medical education due to the association found between personality and empathy among medical students. However, the associations between empathy and big five personality traits in medical education are still underrepresented in the existing literature and relevant studies have not been conducted among medical students in China, where tensions in the physician-patient relationship have been reported as outstanding problems in the context of China's current medical reform. Thus, the main objective of this study was to examine the associations between empathy and big five personality traits among Chinese medical students. METHODS:A cross-sectional study was conducted in a medical university in Northeast China in June 2016. Self-reported questionnaires including the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and Big Five Inventory (BFI) and demographic characteristics were distributed. A total of 530 clinical medical students became our final subjects. Hierarchical regression analysis was performed to explore the effects of big five personality traits on empathy. RESULTS:Results of this study showed that big five personality traits accounted for 19.4%, 18.1%, 30.2% of the variance in three dimensions of empathy, namely, perspective taking, empathic concern and personal distress, respectively. Specifically, agreeableness had a strong positive association with empathic concern (? = 0.477, P<0.01), and a moderate association with perspective taking (? = 0.349, P<0.01). Neuroticism was strongly associated with personal distress (? = 0.526, P<0.01) and modestly associated with perspective taking (? = 0.149, P<0.01). Openness to experience had modest associations with perspective taking (? = 0.150, P<0.01) and personal distress (? = -0.160, P<0.01). Conscientiousness had a modest association with perspective taking (? = 0.173, P<0.01). CONCLUSION:This study revealed that big five personality traits were important predictors of self-reported measures of both cognitive and affective empathy among Chinese medical students. Therefore, individualized intervention strategies based on personality traits could be integrated into programs to enhance empathy in medical education.

Dataset Information

Big Five Personality Traits Predict Successful Transitions From School to Vocational Education and Training: A Large-Scale Study.

Publications

Big Five Personality Traits Predict Successful Transitions From School to Vocational Education and Training: A Large-Scale Study.

Similar Datasets

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