20 - The Occupational Personality Questionnaire

Summary

The Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) is a family of personality questionnaires designed to give information on an individual's preferred behaviour on a number of work-related characteristics. The questionnaires were developed by SHL for use in the workplace, and only item content which is directly related to the world of work has been included. The OPQ questionnaires have been designed for a range of applications involving the individual, the team as well as the organisation (SHL, 1999a). The OPQ is particularly appropriate for use with graduate, professional and managerial groups, although the content is applicable to a variety of roles. A number of other OPQ versions have been developed over the years for particular occupational groups, such as the Customer Contact Styles Questionnaire (SHL, 1997) for those in customer service and sales roles and the Work Styles Questionnaire (SHL, 1999b) for use in production and manufacturing. Other, shorter versions of the OPQ were also developed to accommodate those who prefer less detail. These questionnaires provide a summary of an individual's personality based on factor principles, and include a Factor Model with 16 scales and a 6-scale model (Bartram, Brown, Fleck, Inceoglu & Ward, 2006).

The latest model of the OPQ, the OPQ32, has evolved into an international model of personality with 32 dimensions, reflecting the changing nature of work at the beginning of the 21st century. The OPQ32 model of personality breaks personality into three domains – namely, Relationships with People, Thinking Style, and Feelings and Emotions. According to SHL (1999a) the design of the OPQ32 was guided by five criteria: is designed specifically for the world of work; avoids clinical or obscure psychological constructs; is comprehensive in terms of personality scales measured; can be used by human resource professionals and psychologists; and is based on sound psychometric principles.

The OPQ32 consists of 32 scales or dimensions. These are illustrated in Table 20.1. The questionnaire was originally developed in two versions: a normative rating scale version (OPQ32n) and a forced-choice format ipsative scale (OPQ32i). The ipsative scale version (OPQ32i) has now been replaced by a forced-choice format version, using item response theory to generate normative scale scores (OPQ32r).