7th Business & Management Conference, Budapest

AN INITIAL VALIDATION OF A BRIEF MEASURE OF AMBITION

ASHLEE LINCK, KOHYAR KIAZAD, BRIAN COOPER

Abstract:

Ambition has been defined as the generalised and persistent striving for attainment, accomplishment and success and is argued to be central to career success. Despite the recognition of the importance of ambition to career success, few empirically validated measures exist. A brief, five-item measure of ambition has been developed by Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews & Kelly (2007), but this measure has not been previously validated. Consequently, a part of my thesis examines the validation of this ambition scale. Based on a sample of 121 adults, reliability analyses demonstrated the scale to be internally consistent and factor analysis revealed evidence of factorial validity. Correlations of the scale with measures of drive, career aspiration, career ambition and conscientiousness provided evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. The present study provides an important empirical contribution by validating a brief uni-dimensional ambition scale for use in future personality, management and social sciences research.

Keywords: ambition, scale validation, management, personality

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