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Dependability of Personality, Life Satisfaction, and Affect in Short‐Term Longitudinal Data
Author(s) -
Anusic Ivana,
Lucas Richard E.,
Donnellan M. Brent
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00714.x
Subject(s) - dependability , personality , psychology , consistency (knowledge bases) , affect (linguistics) , trait , big five personality traits , term (time) , life satisfaction , social psychology , reliability engineering , computer science , artificial intelligence , engineering , physics , communication , quantum mechanics , programming language
The consistency of individual differences across time has implications for theory building and clinical applications. Indeed, personality psychologists have long worked to place constructs on the continuum of consistency of more trait‐like to more state‐like constructs. Recently, C hmielewski and W atson ([Chmielewski, M., 2009]) highlighted the importance of dependability coefficients for interpreting the results of stability studies. These coefficients provide an estimate of how strongly short‐term transient error affects retest correlations for a given measure. In this article, we use a modified version of K enny and Z autra's ([Kenny, D. A., 1995], [Kenny, D. A., 2001]) STARTS model to estimate dependability of personality, life satisfaction, and affect in a 2‐month longitudinal study of 8 waves. Results from 226 undergraduate students indicated that personality ratings were least influenced by transient state factors, whereas affect was most influenced. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for the continuum of consistency and for the practical issue of selecting retest intervals for dependability analyses.