Relationship between selected characteristics of county extension agents in Mississippi and their level of job performance

The purpose of this descriptive/correlational study was to determine the relationships between the selected characteristics of personality type, gender, race, length of service, and the number of agents in a county unit in the Mississippi State University Extension Service and their level of job performance as measured by their 2000 job performance score. The populations consisted of all county Extension agents in the 82 counties in Mississippi and the sample consisted of all 124 agents who had completed the Myers/Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) Form G and had a numerical performance score on file for the year 2000. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients and point-biserial correlation coefficients were used to assess the overall relationships. The backward elimination multiple linear regression analysis was used to predict the best model for performance. The stepping method criteria used was the probability of F with entry at alpha = .05 and removal at alpha = .10.; The regression analysis revealed that 16.8% of the variance of the performance scores could be attributed to the selected characteristics. The regression model reveled that the best predictors of performance were the personality type thinking/feeling and the number of agents in a county unit. The cross validation analysis revealed an 87.3% shrinkage, which suggested that the model is highly sample-specific and would not likely generalized to the population.; This study found negligible to low associations between the selected characteristics and performance. It was revealed that personality type was not strongly related to performance and, thus, potential employees should not be selected on the basis of their personality type as a way to improve organizational performance. A low positive association was found between tenure and performance and thus it could be concluded that experience does help an Extension agent do a better job.