The impact of home language on the understanding of the vocabulary used in the South African version of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire Fifth Edition

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the understanding of the vocabulary used in the South African version of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire Fifth Edition by native English speakers and non-native English speakers. Two prominent studies investigated the impact of home language when using the earlier version, namely, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire South African 1992 version. Methodological suggestions following from these studies were implemented in this study and the results for the current version were compared to the findings of the earlier studies. The sample comprised 213 first-year university students from different faculties. Understanding of the vocabulary used was operationalised as the ability to provide synonyms for words used in the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire Fifth Edition. The number of correct responses to each word was reported in frequency tables for each language group and Chi-square analyses provided support for these findings. The average percentage of correct responses was calculated to allow for comparisons. The native English-speaking group performed moderately better. The non-native English-speaking respondents nevertheless performed notably higher in this study when compared to earlier studies. This was attributed partly to the changes in the design of this study. Further comparison between the language groups in this study was done using an independent samples t-test. The mean score obtained by each language group was relatively high, but a significant difference between the groups suggested greater difficulty in understanding in the case of non-native English speakers. These findings were further informed by a preliminary investigation into the level of understanding of different population groups.