The PREP™ Integrated Personal Resilience Profile Model was designed in 1984 to examine a unified theory of personality and resiliency combining five key current world requirements into the PREP assessment:

Simplicity of words

Using validated 8th Grade common reading level vocabulary.

Synthesis of CORE Style/Personality Models

Jungian (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), Big Five Factor and the Four Trait/Quadrant models.

Change-Readiness  & Personal Resilience Metric

The works of Hans Selye and Suzanne Kobasa in stress hardiness’ inspired JoAn to examine the long-term stress measurements of perceived interpersonal competence. JoAn had observed high correlations in stressful work settings, workers’ compensation claims and medically validated depression diagnoses.

Inter-Culturally Neutral

Norming the PREP was done with an initial study of over 1600 individuals, in 1984, targeting a work population representing a wide variety of cultural, geographic, age, religion, gender backgrounds, primarily in the North America. Subsequent ongoing  re-norming studies update our global and generational accuracy with thousands of individuals.

HR-Best Practices

Meeting the Affirmative Action and EEOC, currently referenced through Diversity, was at the foundation of JoAn’s outcomes.  PREP was designed to address real-world problems to improve organizational and personal productivity and resilience:  Understanding People, anywhere, anytime.

Forty years after commencing, PREP proudly retains its uniqueness for measuring Personal Resilience – now with decades’ worth of both statistical and anecdotal research, longitudinal validation and reliability studies conducted globally across a wide diversity of ages (10-94), racial, gender and other cultural factors.

PREP has conducted global re-norming longitudinal, test-retest reliability, cross-validation studies including with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as well as Quadrant Based Models in 1991/2 and most recently the Big Five Factor NEO-PI in 2008-9.  We have continuously validated our Trait reliability and attribute much of our extraordinarily high statistical reliability to PREP’s unique  8th grade common reading level survey words.  Our accuracy remains among the top assessments for measuring cross-culturally and inter-generationally neutral behavioral traits and personal resilience.

The face validity of PREP ranks among the highest in the assessment industry that generates over $1 Billion annually. PREP’s development and ongoing research have produced a robust, real-time instrument that measures an individual’s current energy, stress, adapted style and motivation as well as their “natural” style that tends to remain relatively constant over time.

Theoretical Foundation
PREP Personality Reports are  based on the work of personality and psychometric theorists such as Hippocrates, Carl Jung, Raymond Cattell, Alfred Adler, Gordon Allport, and Stress models by Hans Selye, U of Washington’s Social Adjustment Scale research, Dr  Samuel Houston, among others.

The Survey validation was conducted in 1984 with over 1600 individuals (adults and teenagers) aged 13 – 92. The first longitudinal study was conducted in 1991-1992 by Dr. Samuel Houston, then Department Chair of Math and Applied Statistics at the University of Northern Colorado and JoAn Mann, MBA.

The new long-term resilience /stress measurement that had been observed prior to 1984 to have high correlation in test groups was validated in both the initial and second studies.

The PSP profile  CORE Traits were longitudinally cross-correlated with the Myers-Briggs, traditional 4-quadrant models in a sampling of adult students at Western State College in Oregon in 1991/2.

Cross-correlations with the PDP Second edition survey were also conducted. An analysis of internal correlations of the PSP indicated extremely high test strengths (that is, having no internal correlations) with the Problem solving style, Communications style, Exacting trait, Relaxed trait, Proactive vs. Responsive, Outgoing and Controlling traits in the Natural style. The significance level used was .0001.

The studies included a cross-section of the population in the US, with geographic areas, ethnic backgrounds, gender differences represented. 90-day test-retests were conducted for reliability measurements on 100 individuals, with a .91 reliability factor for traits remaining consistently on the same side of the norm line. (Those traits further from the norm line were more predictable than those within one standard deviation.) Specific Research Papers can be requested by contacting us.

In 1983, JoAn established PREP’s survey and research design outcomes:

• Five-minute survey that anyone from ages 10-110 could take
• 8th grade common reading level words that anyone at work or everyday interactions can understand and not feel judged about
• Research-hardy metric revealing ones Personal Resilience and CORE character style that support well-being and mental health
• A tool for  individuals up and down any organization type to better communicate, work together to solve problems and reach goals
• Accuracy to a medical research level for accountability, usefulness
• Cross-culturally and -generationally, -gender bias free and valid
• Trust building, focusing on strengths

…even fun to take, at least not confusing or tedious…

Resulting reports would have intuitive charts, straightforward, common language descriptions and narratives that offer deeper understanding through  a certified personal mentor/coach to support and personally implement the PREP insights.

Forty years later, PREP is still on-track.  Thanks for sharing in our journey!