PERSONALITY AND SCHOOL-RELATED ATTITUDES AMONG 11-YEAR-OLD TO 16-YEAR-OLD GIRLS

A sample of 614 girls between the ages of 11 and 16 years completed a short form of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with semantic differential scales of attitude towards English, maths, music, games, religious education, assemblies and school. The data demonstrate the importance of personality for predicting school-related attitudes and support key aspects of Eysenck's theory relating personality and individual differences. Overall, more positive school-related attitudes are held by pupils who score low on psychoticism, low on neuroticism and high on the lie scale as an index of social conformity. Pupils who score high on extraversion also hold more positive attitudes towards school in general and games lessons in particular, but not towards other aspects of the curriculum.