Work engagement and its relationship with personality traits among teachers at the secondary level in Norway

Abstract

The current master’s thesis examines the relationship between work engagement and personality among teachers at the secondary level in Norway. It is posited that basic personality characteristics can help us understand why certain teachers are more engaged with work than others. The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) and the Big Five Inventory-20 (BFI-20) were used to assess the work engagement and personality traits of 112 teachers. Results of bivariate correlations and hierarchical multiple regression models indicate that personality plays a small yet notable part in predicting work engagement among teachers (R2 = 0.24, p < 0.01). Further, the results indicate that among the five personality traits which were assessed, emotional stability is the strongest predictor of work engagement. The correlation matrix showed moderate correlations between emotional stability and work engagement (r = 0.26, p < 0.01) as well as two of its subscales, namely vigour (r = 0.38, p < 0.01) and dedication (r = 0.27, p < 0.01). Results from hierarchical regressions gave further support to the claim. Of all five personality traits, emotional stability had the greatest effect on three out of four of the outcome variables, namely work engagement (β = 0.24, p < 0.05), vigour (β = 0.35, p < 0.01), and dedication (β = 0.30, p < 0.01). Conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion were also found to be significantly related, but only to certain subscales of work engagement. The results are limited by the small sample size, its fairly unrepresentative gender distribution, and a lack of contextual variables controlled for.