Brugia Malayi - Clark Science Center - Smith College

A Longitudinal Study of Personality and Life Outcomes
Xiaoye Xu
How can we understand personality comprehensively and predict people’s future decisions? In my research on personality
and life outcomes, I worked with Professor Peterson to Q-Sort age 26 interview data from people who are part of a longitudinal
study. Professor Peterson has been collaborating with a colleague at Wilfred Laurier University, Professor Michael Pratt, who
originally collected the data from subjects at ages 18, 23, 26, and 31. The Q-Sort is a measurement technique used by psychologists
to quantify data on personality functioning and development. Our ultimate goal is to use age 26 Q-Sort data to predict age 31 life
outcomes. I quantified 80 interviews with the Q-Sort. Each interview contained 20-30 pages of transcribed information about a
subject’s work life, relationships, goals, regrets, and religious upbringing.
For our study we used the California Adult Q-Sort developed by Jack Block (1961/2008) at UC Berkeley to standardize
different raters’ perceptions of the same individual by providing raters with a common descriptive language to use. Examples of
CAQ items include: “Is uncomfortable with uncertainty and complexity”, “Keeps people at a distance”, “Has warmth”, and “Is
productive”. Over the summer I Q-sorted the interviews with Professor Peterson and other lab members. Multiple raters for
each interview are necessary to establish levels of interrater reliability. At the beginning of the summer we established reliability
by reading the same interview, conducting our Q-Sorts independently, and then discussing each case extensively. Our discussions
broadened my horizons about how people live life, and enlightened me in ways that I hope will lead me to be more open and
creative.
At the end of this summer’s research, our lab had finished Q-sorting all 104 subjects at least once. We have reliable CAQ
data for 68 subjects (65% of the sample). The remaining 36 subjects still need a third or fourth rater for reliability purposes.
During the coming academic year we will complete the remaining Q-Sorts, enter the composite data into SPSS, and generate
reliability, descriptive, and inferential statistics. Regarding the inferential statistics, we will examine how personality as assessed by
the CAQ at age 26 predicts levels of generativity (i.e., desire to invest in society and care for others) and authoritarianism (i.e.,
cognitive rigidity and aggressiveness) at age 31.
Through the SURF I was given the opportunity to practice basic principles of personality and developmental research that
I learned about in my Research Methods class. In addition, as an international student from China, reading records of interviews
from North American citizens provided me with a useful resource to understand western culture, which is important to my
future goals to compare Asian and western cultures. For example, from the interviews, I found out a lot about North American
parenting practices and I could not help but compare this to Chinese parenting. I am developing plans now to write an honors
thesis with Professor Peterson about Chinese parenting practices and will collect a pilot study in my junior year. (Supported by the
Frances Baker Holmes Fund)
Advisor: Bill Peterson
References:
Block, J. (1961/2008). The Q-Sort Method in Character Appraisal. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
2012
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