THE PROACTIVE PERSONALITY SCALE AND OBJECTIVE JOB-PERFORMANCE AMONG REAL-ESTATE AGENTS

A sample of 131 real estate agents was used to examine the criterion v alidity of the Proactive Personality Scale (T. S. Bateman and J. M. Gr ant, 1993). A job performance index was computed for each agent from a rchival records of the number of houses sold, number of listings obtai ned, and commission income over a 9-month period. Experience, social d esirability, general mental ability, and 2 of the Big Five factors-Con scientiousness and Extraversion-were controlled for, and the Proactive Personality Scale explained an additional 8% of the variance in the o bjective measure of agents' job performance. These results provide add itional evidence for the criterion validity of the Proactive Personali ty Scale and suggest that specific personality measures can have incre mental validity over the Big Five factors.