Abstract thesis Frank Gehring
This research deals with the construction and validation of an instrument to measure contextual performance (Organizational Citizenship Behavior, OCB) among college students. The new questionnaire UCB (Universitary Citizenship Behavior) has been developed on the basis of a requirements review with 101 students and proved and optimized in a preliminary study (n = 397). The ultimate questionnaire has been validated in a third study (n = 282) in which cognitive and non-cognitive variables were considered on the part of the predictors as well as the criteria. For predicting task performance (grades in university-entrance and intermediate diploma) students´ verbal intelligence was measured by the multiple-choice word test (MWT-B, Lehrl, 1976). The Big Five Inventory (BFI, Rammstedt & John, 2005) as well as a novel job-related personality test (Beauducel & Kersting, in press) were applied for predicting contextual performance (UCB).
The construct validity of the new questionnaire has been confirmed by exploratory factor analysis. Four of the five intended dimensions could be separated: Helping, Conscientiousness, Sportsmanship and Civic Virtue. As already shown in other studies no empirical support was found for Courtesy, the fifth dimension. Convergent and discriminant validity have been demonstrated by analyses of correlation and regression analyses. The findings indicate that contextual performance can be predicted by personality traits whereas verbal intelligence contributes solely to the prediction of task performance. The results are corroborated by strong relationships between UCB measured by the new questionnaire and UCB assessed by self-reported biographical data.