The CPAI-2 as a Culturally Relevant Personality Measure in Differentiating Among Academic Major Groups

Abstract

We examined whether the Cross-Cultural (Chinese) Personality Assessment Inventory-2 (CPAI-2), developed by the combined emic–etic approach, could provide useful information for us to understand the relations between personality and the key academic major groups in the Chinese context. Participants in this study included 989 university students from 9 universities in Hong Kong. Discriminant analysis showed that the personality traits measured by the CPAI-2 could significantly differentiate among six academic major groups, confirming the utility of personality variables as predictors of career-relevant choice in non-Western cultures. Among the 28 CPAI-2 personality scales, 7 significantly differentiated the 6 major groups in our multivariate analysis of variance. Two of these scales reflect universal intellectual styles while the other five were relational in natural. Among these five relationship-oriented scales, Extraversion versus Introversion and Leadership correspond to similar etic constructs in Western measures while the other three (i.e., Renqing, Social Sensitivity, and Face) are emic constructs. The information provided by these emic constructs can assist career counselors to be more sensitive to the cultural context of career choice of Chinese young people.