College and Research Libraries DAVID L. LEE and JANET E. HALL Female Library Science Students And the Occupational Stereotype: Fact or Fiction? Mass media stereotype the librarian pejoratively as compared with other professionals. In a personality comparison of a group of fe- male library science students with a general college student norm, both groups ranked similarly. In some cases, the prospective librarians ranked more favorably than did college students. THE NEGATIVE IMAGE OF TilE LIBRARIAN has recently been exploited in mass me- dia. For example, Publisher~ s Weekly re- ported on an American Motors ad which stated: 'We may lose a few librarians for customers, but we think we~ll gain a few enthusiasts."1 Ironically, profes- sional journals publish titles that also cast a negative image of the librarian. Titles such as "Has Marian the Librari- an Changed?," "What Would You Do With Brighter People?" and "The New Morality and the Old Librarian" help to encourage the continuance of the oc- cupational stereotype.2 Sable wrote a de- scription of the stereotype as follows: She's a she, wears a long, unfashion- able dress down to her calves, sits at a desk in view of all library users with a crabbed, tightly pursed look upon her face. Bespectacled, hair pulled back behind her ears, she is unfailing- ly and eternally middle aged, unmar- ried and most uncommunicative. She exists to put a damper on all sponta- neity, silencing the exuberance of the young with a harsh look or hiss of air . . . an ultimately pitiable figure with no outside interest. 3 Mr. Lee is director of testing, North Da- kota Department of Public Instruction; Ms. Hall is a graduate student~ University of North Dakota~ Bismarck. The stereotype could be used to infer that prospective librarians would not be similar to typical college students. The validity of the occupational stereotype for prospective librarians can be tested in a comparison . of their personality characteristics and those of the typical college student. Specifically, the follow- ing research question can be asked: "What are the mean differences between a group of female prospective librari- ans and a female college norm group on certain personality characteristics as . measured by the Sixteen Personality· Factor Questionnaire ( 16 PF) ?" METIIOD Because much literature that stereo-- types librarians has lacked verification, . it was deemed essential to conduct an: empirical study. Group means of the 16; PF were compared between a group of · female prospective librarians at the · University of North Dakota and a fe- · male college norm group. 4 The means on each of the sixteen factors for these· two groups was first compared by profile- inspection, which showed ( 1) if the · prospective librarians scored outside the · average range of scores for the female · college norm group; and (2) if the · prospective librarians conformed to the · occupational stereotype. This procedure: I 265 266 I College & Research Libraries • September 1973 was followed by computation of unre- lated t tests for the two sets of group means.5 Finally, a profile similarity co- efficient, rp, as devised by Cattell and Eber, was calculated to determine the degree of similarity between the two sets of profiles. 6 The subjects consisted of forty-five female library science students enrolled at the University of North Dakota dur- ing the 1970-71 fall semester. Included in this sample were fifteen graduate stu- dents and thirty undergraduate students. The subjects ranged in age from 18 to 58 with a mean age of 25.69 and a stan- dard deviation of 9.55. (See Table 1.) The scales are measured by a sten score which is a standard score with equal intervals from one through ten. Based on a mean sten score of 5.50 for the female college norm group, the average scores on the profile range from 4.75 to 6.25. Scores below 4.75 would tend toward the first word listed for that factor and scores above 6.25 would tend toward the second word listed. for each scale. (Furthermore, on thir- teen of the sixteen scales, the subjects' mean sten scores were within .48 of the female college norm group mean. It ap- pears that the responses of these pro- spective librarians were quite similar to the female college norm group re- sponses.) Table 2 shows whether prospective li- brarians conform to the occupational stereotype as compared to the college norm group. A comparison of group means between the prospective librarians and the norm group revealed that there were signifi- cant differences ( .01) on factors B, Q1, and Q2. On these scales of intelligence, experimentation, and self-sufficiency the prospective librarians scored higher than the norm group. Furthermore, Ta- ble 2 shows a profile similarity coeffi- cient of .95, indicative of similar pro- files between the two groups. DISCUSSION RESULTS As this study was limited to female Examination of Table 1 reveals that prospective librarians enrolled at the the mean sten scores for the subjects University of North Dakota during one were all above 4.75 and this not in the semester, no attempt should be made to direction of the low score description generalize these findings to all female Factor A B c E F G H I L M N 0 Ql Q2 Qa Q4 TABLE 1 16 PERSONALITY FACTOR QuESTIONNAIRE, FEMALE PRosPECTIVE LmRARIANS SUBJECT MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS Description Subject Subject Standard Low Score High Score Means Deviations RESERVED vs. OUTGOING 5.33 2.00 LESS INTELLIGENT vs . MORE INTELLIGENT 6.75 1.90 AFFECTED BY FEELINGS vs. EMOTIONALLY STABLE 5.24 1.64 HUMBLE vs. ASSERTIVE 5.62 2.34 SOBER vs. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY 5.64 1.90 EXPEDIENT vs. CONSCIENTIOUS 5.44 1.93 SHY vs. VENTURESOME 5.02 1.98 TOUGH-MINDED vs. TENDER-MINDED 5.69 2.13 TRUSTING vs. SUSPICIOUS 5.37 1.67 PRACTICAL vs. IMAGINATIVE 5.87 1.85 FORTHRIGHT vs. SHREWD 5.16 1.97 SELF -ASSURED vs. APPREHENSIVE 5.71 1.53 CONSERVATIVE vs . EXPERIMENTING 6.49 1.70 GROUP-DEPENDENT vs. SELF -SUFFICIENT 6.38 1.79 CASUAL vs. CONTROLLED 5.31 2.27 RELAXED vs. TENSE 5.91 1.86 OccupaUonal Stereotype I 261 TABLE 2 MEANS OF DIFFERENCE AND T TEsTS BETWEEN FEMALE LmRARY SciENCE STUDENTS (N =45) AND THE CoLLEGE FEMALE NoRM GnoUP (N= 1012) Means of p Factor Difference Level A -.17 -.55 ns B 1.25 4.25 .01 c -.26 -1.02 ns E .12 .34 ns F .14 .48 ns G -.06 -.20 ns H -.48 -1.57 ns I .19 .56 ns L -.13 -.50 ns M .37 1.29 ns N -.34 -1.12 ns 0 .21 .88 ns Ot .99 3.76 .01 Q2 .88 3.17 .01 Qs -.19 -.55 ns Q. .41 1.42 ns ~D2 = 4.24 rp= .95 Note-The signs ttn means of difference indicate the direction of scores from the college female norm group mean of 5.50. prospective librarians or to all depart- ments of library science. Since the mean scores for the subjects on thirteen of the sixteen scales were within the average range and the mean scores for the other three scales were in a favorable direction above the average range, it is evident that the occupational stereotype failed to receive any support from the results of this study. Hather, in contrast to the occupational stereo- type, this group of library science stu- dents was not found to be more rigid, conscientious, conventional, conserva- tive, tense, or less intelligent and less stable than the college female norm group. In addition, three scores on the scales which revealed statistical diHer- ences between the groups (More Intelli- gent, Experimenting, Self-Sufficient) were favorable to prospective librarians. · Interpretation of these results seems to indicate that further empirical study could compare occupational group pro- files and to ascertain the validity of as- sumptions regarding occupational stere- otypes. Future research could concen- trate on larger samples of both sexes from a wide geographical distribution and also include people working in oc- cupations as well as prospective workers. REFERENcES l. "Confession of Error," Publishers Weekly 4. R. B. Cattell and H. W. Eber, Manual for 199:28 ( 18 Jan. 1971). the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire 2. H. Deutsch, "Has Marian the Librarian (Champaign, Ill.: Institute for Personality Changed?" New York State Educational and Ability Testing, 1962). Journal 54:26-27 ( 1967); M. Kraft, "What 5. B. J. Underwood, C. P. Duncan, J. A. Tay- Would You Do With Brighter People?" ]our- lor, and J. W. Cotton, Elementary Statistics nal of Education for Librarianship 7:21-28 ( New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, (Summer 1966); E. M. Oboler, "The New 1954). Morality and the Old Librarian," ALA Bul- 6. R. B. Catell and H. W. Eber, Handbook for letin 62:1369-73 (Dec. 1968). the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire 3. A. P. Sable, "The Sexuality of the Library (Champaign, Ill.: Institute for Personality Profession," Wilson Library Bulletin 43: and Ability Testing, 1957). 7 48-51 (April 1969).