Personality Traits of Bus Drivers conducive to maintaining good student behavior

Personality Traits
Running head: PERSONALITY TRAITS OF BUS DRIVERS






Personality Traits of Bus Drivers conducive to maintaining
good student behavior


S. Brent Depee‟
May, 2009





A dissertation submitted to the Education Faculty of
Lindenwood University in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the
degree of
Doctor of Education
School of Education

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UMI Number: 3372325


Copyright 2009 by
Depee, S. Brent


All rights reserved




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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the following people for their unconditional
love and support that they have shown me through this
journey in my life. I first want to thank my wife, Whitney,
for all the sacrifices she made while I have attempted to
further my education. I want to thank my children,
Mackenzie, Dalton, and Dayne for understanding why I was
gone so much from home. I want to thank my parents, Kent
and Donna, for their continued support and for the example
they both set for my brother, sister, and me. I am forever
grateful to them for being such good role models and
emphasizing the importance of God, family, and education. I
want to especially thank my mother for paving the way for
my life in education and my sister-in-law, Sherry, for her
help in this study.
This study is a continuation of my specialist project
that was completed at Southwest Baptist University in 2006.
I want to give special thanks to Dr. Robert Perry for his
help with the statistical aspects of this study.



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ABSTRACT

School administrators are faced with the responsibility of
disciplining students for misconduct on the school bus.
Some bus drivers frequently send discipline referrals to
the administration, whereas others seldom do. This study
attempts to identify certain personality traits of bus
drivers that contribute to good student behaviors. Bus
drivers from rural Missouri school districts who drove
regular school routes were given the Global 5 Personality
Trait Test. Building principals from these rural school
districts gathered bus discipline referrals for the first
semester of the 2008-2009 school year. The research design
is quantitative causal-comparative in nature, while the
data was collected and analyzed with the use of multiple t-
tests and the Pearson r. No significant differences between
the personality traits of drivers with numerous discipline
referrals were found compared to the drivers with minimal
bus discipline referrals.




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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES.............................................x
CHAPTER ONE-INTRODUCTION...................................1

Background of the Problem.............................1

Theoretical Underpinnings.............................2

Statement of the Problem..............................4

Rationale for the Study..........................5

Independent Variables............................7

Dependent Variables..............................7

Statement of Hypothesis...............................7

Null hypothesis..................................7

Alternative hypothesis...........................8

Limitations...........................................8

Delimitations.........................................9

Summary..............................................10
CHAPTER TWO – REVIEW OF LITERATURE........................11

Background of the Study..............................11

Review of Literature.................................11

Historical aspects of Personality Trait Tests...12

Carl Jung..................................12

Myers-Briggs...............................13

Francis Galton.............................14

Alfred Binet...............................16
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Raymond Cattell............................19

Hans Eysenck...............................23

Gordon Allport.............................24

Big Five Personality Trait Test......................26

Personnel and Discipline.............................32

Personality Traits and Student Behavior..............37

Personality Traits and Decision Making...............38

Personality Traits and Job Performances..............42

Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance...........47

Personality and Stressful Situations.................62

Requirements of Bus Drivers..........................65

What are the Experts looking for?....................67

Summary..............................................69
CHAPTER THREE – METHODOLOGY...............................72

Introduction.........................................72

Subjects.............................................74

Sampling Procedure...................................75

Research Setting.....................................76

Research Design......................................85

Instrumentation......................................86

Validity of Instrument...............................87

Reliability of the Instrumentation...................87

Validity of the Study................................87
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Reliability of the Study.............................88

Statistical Treatment of the Data....................88

Rationale for Selected Statistical Treatment.........88

Explanation of Data Treatment for Variables..........88

Summary..............................................89
CHAPTER FOUR – RESULTS....................................90

Introduction.........................................90

Results..............................................90

Analysis of Data.....................................96

Deductive Conclusions................................96

Null hypothesis.................................96

Alternative hypothesis..........................97

Summary..............................................97
CHAPTER FIVE – DISCUSSION.................................98

Introduction.........................................98

Implications for Schools.............................99

Recommendations.....................................100

Summary.............................................101

REFERENCES..........................................103

VITA................................................128



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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Big Five Theory Dimension.......................29
Table 2. Student Ethnic Composition......................76
Table 3. Student Characteristics.........................78
Table 4. Where Graduates Go..............................79
Table 5. Expenditures per child and ACT Scores...........80
Table 6. Population Basis................................81
Table 7. Workforce by Occupation.........................82
Table 8. Family measures of income.......................82
Table 9. Poverty.........................................83
Table 10. Descriptive Statistics for driver referrals.....90
Table 11. Drivers two or more SD from the mean............93
Table 12. Drivers one SD from mean........................93
Table 13. t-test (p>.05)for the Global 5..................94
Table 14. Crosstabs comparing referrals to traits.........95

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