Construction of the SETA
Design Goals and Assumptions
Oddly enough, very few
guidelines have been available to anyone interested in
creating this type of environmental assessment
instrument. Consequently, a "right tool for the right
job" approach to designing and testing the SETA has been
used. A few overriding design goals were established at
the beginning.
- The presentation
format and layout of the assessment should resemble
the primary measurement of psychological type, the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™ or MBTI™ tool.
- A forced-choice
format can reveal responses that are consistent with
the underlying Jungian constructs (Hicks, 1984).
- A mixture of phrase questions
and word pairs respects the different approaches to responding to
items that Myers and Briggs observed in people (Myers et al, 1998).
Finally, the SETA
needed to be "generic" enough to be used in all the
different contexts and settings as the MBTI instrument.
Hence, general terms (environment, people, activities)
are used in items.
Item Development
SETA items were
generated from two sources (Craik, 1981). Behaviorally
derived SETA items were adapted from the validity studies
and research projects reported in the previous MBTI
Manual (Myers & McCaulley, 1985), as well as from
the growing number of research studies related to the
functioning of the different psychological types.
Theory-derived items resulted from taking an
interactional view of the Jungian hypothesis and the
developing taxonomy of environmental types (see
Theory).
Finally, using recognized environmental subdomains or
context-specific areas as guides, items were reexamined
across four subdomains that were drawn from work by Moos
(1979): the human aggregate, physical elements and their
arrangements, the organizational structure, and the
social climate. Sample items appear below.
Item and Scale Analysis
Item/scale analysis
has been accomplished in three ways. The first approach
relied on suggestions by Meir and Gati (1981) for
analysis of assessments that produce multidimensional
profiles, including review of non-response rate, scrutiny
of the response distribution, and examination of the
correlations with both intended and non-intended scales.
The second procedure was an exploratory factor analysis
of SETA responses, using principle components extraction,
which helped reduce the number of items to 60. Those
results can be found in the SETA Manual (Salter,
2000) and Salter (1995; 2002). Finally, a subsequent
confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the overall
measurement model (Salter & Vandiver, 2002). That
analysis supported the existence of four interrelated
latent constructs, as measured by the 15 items on each of
the SETA's four scales.
Sample Items from SETA-Form B*
|
Extraversion-Introversion
(E-I) Scale
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|
|
1.
|
The
atmosphere of this environment is
typically
|
|
|
(A)
hushed.
|
|
|
(B)
noisy.
|
|
|
25.
|
(A)
individuals
|
|
|
(B)
groups
|
|
|
Sensing-Intuition (S-N) Scale
|
|
|
2.
|
Within
this environment, which is rewarded
more often?
|
|
|
(A)
creativity
|
|
|
(B)
efficiency
|
|
|
38.
|
(A)
facts
|
|
|
(B)
imagination
|
|
|
Thinking-Feeling (T-F) Scale
|
|
|
7.
|
The
usual tone of this environment
is
|
|
|
(A)
businesslike.
|
|
|
(B)
friendly.
|
|
|
35.
|
(A)
people
|
|
|
(B)
things
|
|
|
Judging-Perceiving (J-P) Scale
|
|
|
10.
|
When
a decision must be made, this
environment offers mostly
|
|
|
(A)
alternatives.
|
|
|
(B)
guidelines.
|
|
|
24.
|
(A)
consistent
|
|
|
(B)
changing
|
|
References
Link and
Publications
Link
*Modified and reproduced by special
permission of the Publisher, CPP,
Inc., Palo Alto, CA 94303
from SETA-Form B by Daniel W. Salter. Copyright 2000 by CPP, Inc. All
rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited without the Publisher's
written consent.
