Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Higher Education Administration PhD

First Advisor

Hinsdale Bernard

Second Advisor

Erich W. Baumgartner

Third Advisor

Charles H. Tidwell, Jr.

Abstract

Problem. The Orthopaedic Scholar Institute (OSI) Team realized its need for a more objective selection and admission process that, as much as possible, quantified the characteristics desired in OSI students rather than relying solely on referral perception, intuition, and an interview, but it did not have a clear method or approach to do so. Administering standardized inventories that highlighted these desired characteristics and aided in the selection and admission process seemed to be an objective approach to obtain more quantifiable data. The problem for my study was, therefore, whether the Myers- Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) alone could measure a student’s diligence and, subsequently, predict that student’s fit in an orthopaedic setting, or whether another objective measure would be necessary to identify these skills.

Method. This ex-post facto study compared the responses from freshmen in a Midwestern liberal arts college on two standardized inventories (i.e., MBTI and Diligence Inventory- Higher Education [DI-HE]). Factor Analysis was completed on the DI-HE. A one-way ANOVA was performed to determine the relationship between the responses.

Results. The findings yielded a relationship between the judger (“J”) and the sensor - judger (“SJ”) preferences on the MBTI, and the DI-HE. This suggests that the MBTI and the DI-HE could be used in the selection process for admission into the Orthopaedic Scholar Institute because both instruments appear to measure behaviors consistent with diligence; however, the use of the DI-HE in the selection process for OSI appears to be duplicative because of the similarity of results.

Conclusions. In order to conclude that the DI-HE would be a useful instrument in the selection and admission process to the Orthopaedic Scholar Institute, the findings had to demonstrate that candidates with a high level of diligence, as measured by the DI-HE, would be evenly dispersed across MBTI types. Because of the strong relationship between the DI-HE and the “J” (judger) on the MBTI, however, I concluded that the DIHE is too similar to the MBTI in measuring diligence and should not be administered as a component of the selection process for OSI.

Subject Area

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Universities and colleges--Admission.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dissertations/430/

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