Abstract
Perfectionism has been studied for almost 30 years. In the present study, we investigated the internal validity of The Perfectionism Inventory (PI—Hill et al., 2004) in an occupation that encourages perfectionistic tendencies in own behavior or in students' behavior. We collected data from a large sample of schoolteachers (N = 633, 81.18% female, 63.02% from urban areas, 46.66% from secondary schools, mean age = 42.11 years) recruited using a snowball sampling approach, and we analyzed the factor structure of the PI using confirmatory factor analyses. We found that the 8-factor structure of PI provided a reasonable fit root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA = 0.055, 90% CI = (0.053–0.057); SRMR = 0.071]. However, additional analyses revealed problematic divergent validity only in the case of the scales associated with self-evaluative perfectionism, not in the case of the scales associated with conscientious perfectionism. We found that teachers displayed distinguishably different forms of perfectionism only when it referred to own person, not when it referred to perfectionism imposed to others. Based on these findings, we suggested that the PI could provide a useful framework for investigating the role of conscientious-related forms of perfectionism in the development of teacher beliefs regarding their school behavior.
Highlights
Perfectionism is a complex, multidimensional personality trait (Hill et al, 2016; Stoeber, 2017) which is strongly related to various affective disorders such as anxiety, depression (Egan et al, 2011), suicide tendencies (Smith et al, 2018), and insomnia (Schmidt et al, 2018)
Because we still have little evidence to assess the internal validity of the Perfectionism Inventory (PI) scales, we aimed to fill this gap by conducting a thorough investigation of the PI psychometric properties
We present evidence regarding the psychometric properties of the PI (Hill et al, 2004), a questionnaire that combined the most influential theoretical perspectives on perfectionism
Summary
Perfectionism is a complex, multidimensional personality trait (Hill et al, 2016; Stoeber, 2017) which is strongly related to various affective disorders such as anxiety, depression (Egan et al, 2011), suicide tendencies (Smith et al, 2018), and insomnia (Schmidt et al, 2018) When they define perfectionism, scientists refer to the idea of having high standards of performance (Hewitt et al, 2017), and to the idea of having overly critical evaluations of own behavior (Frost et al, 1990; Hewitt and Flett, 1991). As recent research suggested that perfectionistic tendencies are associated with a wide range of affective disorders (Egan et al, 2011; Maricutoiu et al, 2019), it is important to understand how perfectionistic tendencies are manifested by teachers in the educational environment
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