Analysis of Personality Types and Attitudes Toward Information Technology

University of North Texas
April 4, 1997

Compiled by the following participants in
Computer Education and Cognitive Systems (CECS) 5610:
Analysis of Educational Technology Research

Christophel, Janice
Hardy, Chnita
Johnson, David P.
Kramer, Krista
Neal, Kathryn
Williams, Susan

Edited by Gerald Knezek (Instructor)
Second Draft May 9, 1998

Introduction

Correlation coefficients were used as a measure of the relationship between Myers-Briggs indicators of personality types and attitudes toward information technology as measured by the Teachers' Attitudes Toward Information Technology (TAT) Questionnaire (Christensen & Knezek, 1996; Knezek & Christensen, 1998). Coefficients were produced using data gathered in January 1998 at the University of North Texas from a subject pool of thirteen graduate students in the Analysis of Educational Research in Educational Technology class. Because the sample size is small, findings should be viewed as indicators of areas worthy of further study, rather than confirmation/discovery of underlying principles.

Instrumentation

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator of Personality produces measures on four bipolar scales:

• Extroversion / Introversion
• Sensing / Intuition
• Thinking / Feeling
• Judging / Perceiving

The instrument was administered as a Hypercard stack running on a Macintosh computer. Eight indices were produced by the program, indicating extent of extroversion (E), introversion (I), sensing (S), intuition (N), thinking (T), feeling (F), judging (J), and perceiving (P).

Attitudinal data were gathered for eight separate indices from the Teachers' Attitudes Toward Information Technology Questionnaire (TAT) (Knezek & Christensen, 1998). The subscales extracted from the TAT were constructed using semantic differential items taken from Zaichkowsky's (1985) Modified Personal Involvement Inventory, a context free semantic differential scale that focuses on a person's perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs, values, and interests (p. 342) (see Figure 1). Semantic items were hand coded with a number from 1-7, representing the particular space the respondent marked between the adjective pairs. Scores from all pairs were then summed to produce a single subscale score. International consistency reliability for these subscales has been shown to be greater than r = .9 using data gathered from K-12 educators. A sample subscale is listed in Figure 1.

Subjects

The graduate students completing the Myers-Briggs and the TAT represented education and business communities. Most were from the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metropolitan area. The students were proficient in the use of information technology.

Results

The subscales extracted from Teachers' Attitudes Toward Information Technology Questionnaire measured attitudes towards Email, the World Wide Web (WWW), Multimedia (MM), Professional Productivity (PP), and Computers in the Classroom (CC). One additional subscale was also produced using TAT adjective pairs with the target word changed to "Educational Research" (ER).

Significant correlation coefficients ( p < .05) were found in the following areas.

• Introverted respondents, defined by Myers Briggs as quiet, friendly, and non-technical, prefer to use multimedia in the classroom.
• Feeling personality types place a higher value on Educational Research than thinking types.
• Judging types did not value having computers in the classroom as highly as perceiving types.

These relationships are shown in Table 1 below.

Discussion

Caution needs to be taken when interpreting the data due to the small sample size.

People who are introverted seem to prefer multimedia software. Thus information technology may provide these educators with a means to enhance the curriculum.

Subjects who scored high in the feelings category realized the need for technical support to back their decisions regarding computers in education.

Subjects who scored high in the judging category did not think that computers in the classroom are essential. Conversely, subjects who scored high in the perceiving category want to implement computers in the classroom.

However, according to Hartman (1997), the Myers Briggs Type Indicator of Personality might not indicate four bipolar types. Their research points to three bipolar types with intuition the same as perceiving and sensing the same as judging. Therefore further study correlating the Myers Briggs Type Indicator of Personality and the Teachers' Attitude Toward Information Technology Questionnaire is needed to validate these differences and similarities.

References