Adding Personality to Gifted Identification: Relationships Among Traditional and Personality-Based Constructs

One of the underutilized tools in gifted identification is personality-based measures. Previous research has shown the Overexcitability Questionnaire II (OEQII) is able to differentiate between gifted and non-gifted respondents; however, the OEQII is difficult to administer and has questionable reliability. The Sensory Profile measures a similar construct to the OEQII without those issues. A multiple confirmatory factor analysis was utilized to examine the relationships between traditional identification methods (grade point average, achievement test, intelligence test, high school class rank) and personality-based measures (OEQII and Sensory Profile). The pattern of correlations between the four latent variables indicate this model could be measuring two constructs, one related to traditional intelligence-related aspects of giftedness and the other related to personality-related aspects of giftedness. If that is the case, a personality-based measure could prove to be a good measure of “personality-related” giftedness. Multiple discriminant analyses were then conducted to determine if the identification method would discriminate between gifted and nongifted in a sample of adult students at a large Midwestern university. Traditional identification methods and the OEQII were able to discriminate between gifted and nongifted but the Sensory Profile was not. One potential reason is that both the OEQII and Sensory Profile measure psychomotor and sensual overexcitabilities but only the OEQII measures imaginational, intellectual, and emotional overexcitabilities. Future research finding a personality-based instrument that is easy to administer and reliably measures the imaginational, intellectual, and emotional overexcitabilities is encouraged.