Agricultural Leadership Development Program Participant Personality and Demographic Characteristics: An Empirical Analysis

Although personality has been widely studied within the academic literature, there has been little research into the relationship between personality and leadership development programs, particularly within an agricultural context for adult learners. The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of relationships among ten aspects of the Big Five personality factors and demographic characteristics including: gender, age, organizational level, educational attainment, and geographic region within a sample of adult agricultural leadership development program participants. Results of the study indicate that there are differences between demographic groups relative to specific aspects of personality. Among the ten aspects analyzed, the most statistically significant differences between groups were observed between age groups, while the fewest statistically significant differences were observed in the educational attainment and geographic region groups. Effect sizes were also calculated with gender having the largest observed effect sizes and age having the largest number of statistically significant effect sizes.