Personality traits, academic achievement, and their correlation among deaf and hard-of-hearing students attending regular and special schools

Helena Smrtnik Vitulić in Irena Lesar

Summary:  Although this area is relatively well studied in the hearing population, there are no studies in which the authors have directly researched the personality traits of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons in any developmental period. We investigated personality traits in relation to the academic achievement of deaf and hard-of-hearing adolescents, since research findings on the hearing population suggest that personality traits explain a significant proportion of an individual’s academic performance. In this paper, we initially present the results of the study of personality traits of 78 deaf and hard-of-hearing adolescents. They attended regular and special primary schools (classes 6 to 9) and regular and special secondary schools (classes 1 to 4). Personality data were obtained by the self-report measure using the Inventory of Child/Adolescent Individual Differences; final grades of school subjects were collected by school counselors. In none of the robust and specific personality traits did the average results of deaf and hard-of-hearing girls and boys display any deviation from the average results of hearing adolescents (regarding the norms), with one exception: Robust personality trait conscientiousness and specific trait shyness were below average for girls from special primary schools. Deaf and hard-of-hearing students from regular schools achieved higher final grades than deaf and hard-of-hearing students from special schools. Among all four robust personality traits and all included final grades, a significant correlation was found between conscientiousness and Slovene Language grade for deaf and hard-of-hearing students from secondary schools.