Relationship between personality type and grade point average of technical college students

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine if a relationship exists between personality type and grade point average of technical college students in the Computer Information Systems (CIS)-Network Specialist Program at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, WI. The instrument chosen was the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II which is a personality inventory that determines the four dimensions a person's personality including Extroversion vs. Introversion, Intuition vs. Sensing, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judgment vs. Perception. The Temperament Sorter II contains seventy questions and each student chose one of two possible answers to each question. The personality inventory was administered to third and fourth semester students in the CIS-Network Specialist Program during one class period. Involvement in the research was voluntary and approximately sixty students chose to become involved. Once the personality inventories were completed the question responses were compiled in a spreadsheet. The tests were scored to determined which of each of the four dimensions of each student's personality type was more dominant. Grade point information was downloaded from the Fox Valley Technical College mainframe. The Point-Biserial measure of correlation was used to analyze the data to determine whether a relationship exists between personality type and grade point average. Other helpful information that was obtained from this study includes composite personality type of students in the CIS-Network Specialist Program. Since the relationship between personality type and learning style is well documented, this information can help CIS Instructors at Fox Valley Technical College to identify the most appropriate teaching methods for those personality types.