19 - Using the Occupational Personality Profile in South Africa

Summary

The Occupational Personality Profile (OPPro) was developed by Paltiel and Budd in 1990 and was introduced to South Africa in 1994. Initially the questionnaire did not receive a great deal of attention because users of the Psytech range of tests preferred the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire (15FQ), since the 15FQ was based on a model with which most psychologists had become familiar in the course of their professional training. However, once comparative analyses had been done between the 15FQ and the OPPro, the South Africa distributor felt more comfortable recommending the OPPro for South African use since it was shorter and less expensive to use, and the initial reliability coefficients were better than those of the 15FQ. Users have tended to select the OPPro for large-scale projects, and for respondents who have lower levels of English proficiency or education than those who have completed the 15FQ+. The name of the questionnaire was originally abbreviated as OPP; this was subsequently changed to the abbreviation OPPro.

Rationale for the development of the OPPro

The OPPro was not developed according to a general theory of personality. This does not mean that there is no theoretical basis for the questionnaire, because every individual scale does have a theoretical rationale. The choice of constructs to be included in the OPPro was based on an overview of the research literature in the late 1980s. Dimensions were included if they could be shown to be associated with work performance (Budd, 2009). The goal was to develop a questionnaire that tapped into dimensions that predicted work performance according to the knowledge available at the time. The OPPro scales are summarised in Table 19.1.

Even though the scales were considered on individual merit rather than in relation to a general theory of personality, there is sufficient information in these nine scales to generate a comprehensive report on an individual. Derived estimates of the ‘Big Five’ personality factors are also calculated from the OPPro's scales. In practice the OPPro has proved extremely useful, yielding a remarkably comprehensive description of a person within a short administration time of usually less than half an hour.