Personality Assessment

A general overview of the "Personality" assessment

Personality traits describe patterns of feeling, behaving, and thinking. Through understanding personality traits, students can articulate their unique qualities, identify preferred work environments, and better understand their interactions with others. Personality is measured using a six-dimensional HEXACO framework, which includes the following dimensions:

• Honesty-Humility (H)

• Emotional Stability (E)

• Extraversion (X)

• Agreeableness (A)

• Conscientiousness (C)

• Openness to Experience (O)

An example of questions from the Personality Assessment:

Interpreting Emotional Stability Tips:

This particular dimension can be a confusing one. When it was originally described as part of the Big 5, some theorists called it "Neuroticism" and others "Emotional Stability" -- opposite ends of the same trait. The same issue is the case here; "Emotionality" and "Emotional Stability" describe the same trait, but with terms that anchor opposite poles of the continuum. In our experience, we found that PathwayU users preferred Emotional Stability because it was easier to interpret scores. It is indeed the same dimension as Emotionality, but valenced in the opposite direction. Either way is correct from a scientific and practical perspective--we are using the way we think people experience as easier to interpret.

The quickest and most straightforward way to interpret Emotional Stability is "vulnerability to stress," although there is a social element to it as well, where high empathy toward others can be reflected in lower scores.

Low scorers "experience anxiety in response to life's stresses, feel a need for emotional support from others, and feel empathy and sentimental attachments with others."

High scorers "feel little worry even in stressful situations, have little need to share their concerns with others, and feel emotionally detached from others."

Keep in mind that there is no good or bad score. Just like having a high or low score on investigative interests is neither good nor bad, it is who you are. It's more about what you do with knowing this about yourself that matters.

And with our ever-chaotic global situation, it is not shocking that people may score lower on this attribute these days or that educational professionals would score lower on it as a group. So a low-to-moderate score might well be "normal" given how hard everything is right now, and has been since the pandemic realities set in.