PROSPERO

International prospective register of systematic reviews

Citation

Carla Outerbridge, Elliroma Gardiner. Is conscientiousness positively associated with coping in the
workplace? A systematic review. PROSPERO 2018 CRD42018103578 Available from:
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42018103578

Review question
How does conscientiousness, defined at the factor level and within the Five Factor Model, influence coping
behaviours in the workplace for healthy adults who are employed?

Searches
The following electronic databases are included in the search: Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and
PsycINFO. No date restrictions will be applied to the searches. Search results in languages other than
English will be noted, but for practical reasons, only search results in English, or translated into English, will
be assessed.

The search terms will include a variety of terms which may describe challenging tasks or situations, as well
as direct terms to capture coping, and conscientiousness will be defined from the conceptualisation of the
Five Factor Model of personality. Wildcard searches have been used to capture the use of a key word in
various tenses.

Keywords for the searches include: wellbeing, well-being, well being, setback, stress*, threat*, fail*, advers*,
problem*, challeng*, cope, coping, punish*, negative, risk* and are searched in combination with the term
‘conscientiousness’.

Types of study to be included

Include: cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs which collect quantitative data.

The following studies will be excluded: case studies, methodological studies which solely focus on the
development and validation of a psychometric measure, reviews, studies that do not use primary data,
studies which only collect qualitative data, and studies which are published in languages other than English,
for practical reasons. Studies that have published the same research study and data in multiple journals will
only have the most detailed study counted once, to avoid duplication of reporting the same study and data.

Condition or domain being studied

Conscientiousness, one factor from the Five Factor Model of personality is being studied. This factor of
personality has been widely researched in the past, with studies commonly focusing on the benefits
associated with behaviours linked to this personality factor, such as being disciplined, orderly, hard-working,
and focused on gaining achievements (for example, Jackson, Wood, Bogg, Walton, Harms & Roberts, 2010).
Such behaviours are adaptive and are related to success in job performance (for example, Barrick, Mount &
Strauss, 1993), academic achievement (for example, Conard, 2006), and in general health contexts, such as
engagement in healthy behaviours (for example, Madhavan, 2004).

Research has also investigated negative outcomes associated with high levels of conscientiousness, such
as reduced life satisfaction after being unemployed (Boyce, Wood, and Brown 2010) and in response to
stressors (Lin, Me, Wang, L., & Wang, M., 2015).

Considering these two different ways that conscientiousness can influence outcomes, it is important to
understand the role that conscientiousness has in relation to coping, particularly with conscientiousness
being shown to have also positively contributed to effective coping strategies (for example, Straud,
McNaughton-Cassill & Furnham, 2015). The role of conscientiousness in how people cope has not been
systematically reviewed to identify if conscientiousness could be either beneficial or detrimental to

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performance, or both, and how these circumstances may differ in the context of the workplace.

Participants/population
Inclusion: healthy human adults (aged 18 years and above), who are employed. The participants in the
included studies will also have completed a valid and reliable measure which assesses conscientiousness,
as conceptualised in the Five factor Model, of which there are several of these measures.

Exclusion: children and adolescents, people who are unemployed, or are not being paid for the work they are
completing (e.g. volunteers), participants who have been diagnosed with a medical condition, or participants
who completed psychometric measures which have been designed for a clinical sample will not be included.

Intervention(s), exposure(s)
Participants for this review are healthy adults who are currently employed. For each search result to be
considered it will need to assess how the participants coped in the workplace, specifically through a valid and
reliable psychometric measure designed to assess coping. At a more detailed level, it is likely that these
studies will assess specific forms of coping, however, only coping within the severity of everyday life is within
the scope of this study. Studies which assess coping for clinically defined levels of trauma or stress are out
of scope for this study.

In relation to characteristics of the study, only studies which have collected primary data will be included. The
only type of publication included in this review are journal articles.

Comparator(s)/control
Low conscientiousness will be the comparator for this study. In a statistical sense, low conscientiousness will
be defined as one standard deviation below the mean (Boyce, Wood & Brown, 2010).

Main outcome(s)
The most important outcome of the review is to gain a greater understanding of the role of
conscientiousness, either directly or indirectly, in how people cope with challenges in the workplace.
Specifically, the primary outcome is to understand if conscientiousness is helpful for coping, if it is
detrimental for people to cope with a challenge in the workplace, or if results demonstrate conscientiousness
is both detrimental and helpful, depending on other variables.
Measures of effect
The measurement of how people cope in the workplace will be conducted with valid and reliable measures
which specifically assess coping. Developing this greater understanding of the role of conscientiousness in
coping can then be used to inform workplace practices to improve the well-being of employees. No timing
restrictions will be placed upon the collection of data, or in the duration of waves in longitudinal research.

Additional outcome(s)
To provide a greater understanding of the current state of personality research assessing the indirect or
direct relationships with coping. Specifically, this current state will involve the locations of where research is
conducted around the world, the representation of diversity in participants, as well as representation of
participants in various industries of employment. Contributing to this knowledge of where research is being
conducted, and the representation of samples compared with the diversity of the general population will
assist in identifying gaps in research.

Data extraction (selection and coding)

The selection of studies will be based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. There are two researchers involved
in the team. One researcher will select studies based on criteria, and provide these to the second researcher
for review. A portion of the studies will have data extracted in an Excel spreadsheet, and provided to the
second researcher for review and discussion. This can be completed in an ongoing nature to ensure
discrepancies are discussed.

The data to be extracted includes the following: title of article, author names, author affiliations, country of
where author resides, year of publication, journal of publication, impact factor of journal, referencing details

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of publication (year, issue etc.), database article was retrieved from, if funding was received for the study,
and if so, the source of funding, keywords of the article, model of personality used in the study, if other
factors of the Five Factor Model were assessed in the study, if conscientiousness was assessed at the facet
level (as well as factor level, which is a requirement of the study), name of personality measure used, if
article is translated, which dependent variables are in the study, and which scales were used to measure
these, if control variables were used, country of data collection or if conducted online, number of participants,
employment status and load of employment, if employees are in targeted jobs or industries or rather, in the
general population, participant's age, gender, marital status, race, level of education, tenure, type of data
collected (e.g. self-report), statistical significance, and direction of significance.

Risk of bias (quality) assessment [1 change]

The risk of bias will be assessed through the use of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of
Interventions (Higgins & Green, 2008). This will particularly be in relation to evaluating the criteria for
assessing risk as either low, high or uncertain risk of bias, as identified in their Risk of Bias assessment tool.
In addition, it will also be used to monitor and mitigate against the risk for the occurrence of other types of
bias in the study (Higgins & Altman, 2008).

Two researchers will be involved in assessing which search results to exclude, based on criteria. One
researcher will assess the search results based on the criteria, and the second researcher will also revise the
search results which have been included, and a sample which has been excluded, to establish interrater
reliability in the form of Pearson r (a monotonicity estimate) and Gower Similarity Index (an agreement
estimate)

Strategy for data synthesis [1 change]

A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet will be used to track the extraction of the quantitative data from each study.
The functions of Microsoft Excel, and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) will be used to
calculate descriptive statistics to represent characteristics of the studies. It is expected that the studies will be
adequately homogenous to allow for quantitative analysis. The quantitative analysis will primarily be
performed between studies, such that comparisons will be made between different studies rather than
specific individual participant data. Individual participant data is unlikely to be available due to the
quantitative nature of the studies included in the current research, but individual participant data is not
relevant to the research question, which is focused on broad trends in the literature.

There are two researchers involved in this study. In order to resolve any discrepancies, the two researchers
will use agreed upon criteria to objectively assess the inclusion or exclusion of a study. The author details for
each study will be hidden from the content able to be examined, where only the abstract will be able to be
viewed to assess the search result against the eligibility criteria.

One researcher will extract the data from the search results, and the second researcher will review the
extraction of data from those studies. One researcher will independently assess the search results against
the criteria for inclusion and exclusion. The second researcher will then assess the results, and together the
two researchers will discuss any discrepancies for agreement to be reached.

Analysis of subgroups or subsets

Analysis of aspects of the extracted data is expected to take place, and would include analysis on the
representation of the participants to the general population, for characteristics such as age, level of formal
education, diversity, employment details such as type of job, and industry of employment. This analysis is
expected to provide a greater understanding of the representation of this research to the general population,
and identify any gaps in research.

Contact details for further information

Carla Outerbridge
carla.outerbridge@griffithuni.edu.au

Organisational affiliation of the review

Griffith University

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Review team members and their organisational affiliations

Miss Carla Outerbridge. Griffith University
Dr Elliroma Gardiner. Griffith University

Type and method of review

Systematic review

Anticipated or actual start date

03 October 2017

Anticipated completion date

21 December 2018

Funding sources/sponsors
None

Conflicts of interest
Language
English

Country
Australia

Stage of review
Review Ongoing

Subject index terms status

Subject indexing assigned by CRD

Subject index terms

Adaptation, Psychological; Humans; Personality; Workplace

Date of registration in PROSPERO

21 August 2018

Date of first submission

09 July 2018

Stage of review at time of this submission

Stage Started Completed

Preliminary searches Yes Yes
Piloting of the study selection process Yes Yes

Formal screening of search results against eligibility criteria Yes No

Data extraction Yes No

Risk of bias (quality) assessment No No

Data analysis No No

The record owner confirms that the information they have supplied for this submission is accurate and
complete and they understand that deliberate provision of inaccurate information or omission of data may be
construed as scientific misconduct.
The record owner confirms that they will update the status of the review when it is completed and will add
publication details in due course.

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Versions
21 August 2018

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