"Professional Writers, Personality Types, & Genre Choice"
About the AuthorKim Darnell graduated summa cum laude from the University of Nevada, Reno in May 2011. Her studies in English and Psychology led her to take on this research project, under the gracious guidance of Dr. Lynda Walsh. Kim continues to reside in Reno with her husband and chihuahua mix, Roxy. She currently works as a Family Consultant at the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. ContentsIntroduction |
MethodologyThis study had two major components. Phase I entailed the informal, preliminary interviews with professional writers while Phase II entailed the web-based survey. Phase I was a useful precursor to Phase II, as it widened the number of survey participants and validated that some professional writers do perceive personality differences among writers of different genres. Phase IParticipantsParticipants for Phase I were 3 professional, adult writers recruited from the English faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno – one poet, one fiction writer, and one nonfiction writer. For this study, a professional writer was defined as someone who has published at least one piece of writing in any given genre. While writing scholars often consider “professional” writing to be synonymous with “technical writing” or “business writing,” this study utilizes a broader definition of the term to encompass any kind of writing that people could pursue as a career, including creative genres such as fiction and poetry. The term was defined in this way because this study was interested in writers who had experienced some level of success in their writing of any specific genre(s), and publication is a quantifiable marker of such professional success. ProcedureIndividual interviews with participants were scheduled via email. Interviews took approximately 20 minutes and were conducted in faculty offices. The major question addressed was designed informally as a means of generating conversation about perceptions of differences between different types of writers. The final question was asked in order to network with the interviewees to expand the number of survey participants. At the time of interview, the following questions were asked: 2. Are there other writers who you would like to refer me to for participation in my survey? Do you belong to any writer’s associations or clubs that you would like to extend my survey to? Participants’ responses were recorded via note-taking by the interviewer (no personally identifying information was noted). These notes were aimed at recording any personality descriptors mentioned by the interviewees as well as any email addresses they noted that could be used for the recruitment of participants for Phase II. Since these interviews were meant to be very informal and the sample size was extremely small, no recording or transcription was done (i.e. the sample size was so small that coding wouldn’t have yielded any significant patterns). The main purpose of the interviews was simply to informally assess writers’ perceptions of personality differences among writers of different genres and to see if those perceptions could guide the interpretation of the survey results. Phase IIParticipantsParticipants for Phase II were 67 professional, adult writers. These participants were recruited from University of Nevada, Reno faculty (via their public email addresses) as well as by the email addresses provided from Phase I interviewees. All of the writers emailed were also encouraged to forward the survey web link to other writers and/or to post the survey on writing listservs in which they participate. The same qualifications of Phase I applied: In order to be considered a professional writer, a participant must have published at least one piece of writing. ProcedureDue to financial limitations, the MBTI was not administered to survey participants in this study. Rather, participants were instructed to take the Cognitive Style Inventory (see Appendix C), an online self-scoring inventory which allows people to approximate their MBTI scores quickly and without cost by self-identifying with brief listed descriptions and characteristics of each preference choice (Reinhold). The Cognitive Style Inventory was created by Ross Reinhold, researcher and qualified administrator of the MBTI, not as a substitute for the MBTI but as an introduction to it, with aspirations to increase people’s interest in personality types (Reinhold). This inventory was the most accessible tool for this exploratory, pilot study with limited resources, as it allowed participants to estimate their MBTI score on the Web in a short amount of time at no cost. The survey was built online at SurveyMonkey.com, and the web link was emailed to a number of professional writers with a deadline to complete the survey three weeks from the time of email. In order to increase the number of responses, the recruitment emails also included notice of an incentive: survey participants could choose to be entered into a raffle to win a $200 gift card to Amazon. The survey questions asked writers to identify their primary genre and their four-letter personality type (see Appendix B) so that these two variables could be investigated for associations in order to answer the research question stated in the introduction. Genre can be categorized in a number of ways (i.e. short stories and novels; comedies and tragedies; etc.). The primary genres listed as choices on this survey are a reflection of the basic genre differentiations typical in college-level writing courses: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Not only were the investigators most familiar with this classification, it also left the number of genre categories manageable for this small, pilot study. Once the survey deadline had passed, the gift card winner was randomly selected. The winner was notified via email and asked to respond by calling and providing his information so that the gift card could be mailed. All survey data were tallied by the indices of genre and personality (see Table 1). Fisher’s Exact Test was then performed with the help of employees in the University Math Center in order to determine if any relationships of statistical significance had been found between the personality categories and the genre categories. |