Die gebruik van spreekwoorde en uitdrukkings in verbloemde persoonlikheidsmeting

English: Despite the large-scale use of the questionnaire method for personality assessment and the fact that it is regarded as an objective measuring instrument, it causes numerous problems. One of the main problems is the style of response. The study endorses the viewpoint that response styles are undesirable and their influence should be curbed. In an effort to develop a test free of distortion, Bass ( 1956) compiled a questionnaire of proverbs and idiomatic expressions to combine the characteristic of disguised projection techniques with the objectivity of the score key of questionnaires. The purpose of the study was to investigate the possibility of using a collection of idiomatic expressions as items in disguised personality assessment, like Bass did. Two preliminary versions of a collection of 252 idiomatic expressions were compiled. In one the meaning of the particular idiomatic expressions and proverbs was given in brackets, and in the other it was left out to investigate to what extent the respondents were acquainted with the expressions. Two randomly selected groups of 100 each indicated their concurrence with these proverbs in the two different versions. The variances of the 252 items of both tests as well as the percentage of respondents who selected the unknown response category were calculated. On the basis of the data obtained it was decided that the version without explanations was the best test as far as usefulness, applicability and the time of application were concerned. To eliminate the less well-known items and items with low variances, all items in the first version to which 6% or more respondents selected the unknown response category and/or which had a variance lower than 1,00, were excluded. Where two proverbs were variants of the same idea, the one with the smallest variance was left out. According to this method 65 of the original 252 items were retained. During the final application a questionnaire consisting of 65 items was used along with Cattell's sixteen-factor personality questionnaire (16-PF). The test sample consisted of 239 first-year students at the UOFS and 180 National Servicemen. Thereafter the 65 items of this questionnaire were correlated, the eigenvalues of the correlation matrix obtained were calculated and a main factor analysis (first-order factor analysis) was done. Five factors were withdrawn and rotated to simple structure by means of a varimax rotation. Significant loads (0,30 and higher) were found on only three of the five factors. It appears that the first factor reflects a concurrence with general knowledge of the world, the second factor represents an element of cynicism and the third factor reflects a measure of.conservatism and prudence. The reliability quotients were 0,87 (Factor I), 0, 77 (Factor II) and 0, 75 (Factor III) respectively. For each respondent a score was calculated on each of these factors and these scores along with their scores on the 16-PF scales, which had to serve as marker variables, were correlated and subjected to a second-order factor analysis. Subsequently eight factors were retained, which were rotated to simple structure by means of the direct oblimin procedure. The three proverb factors showed high loads on the same factor whereas none of the 16-PF scales registered similar loads. It suggests that the proverb factors define an own factor independent of the 16-PF factors. Thus the study does not suggest that concurrence with idiomatic expressions can be successfully used to assess personality.