Many studies have provided evidence to support the propositions that positive work attitudes, career success, leadership/management effectiveness and high-level performance in sports, management and career development were related to high level of commitment to personal excellence [2]-[4]. The sport psychology literature, for instance, has documented that previous trait research focused mainly on cognitive abilities, personality, motivation and social capacities as key attributes differentiating high performers from low performers. Spanning from 1980s, the emphasis has been placed on the effects of psychological interventions on performance [5].

To the best of our knowledge, few studies were found to date that targeted on the development of personal excellence construct. A personal excellence measurement tool was developed in 2006 to provide a set of behaviour- and cognitive-based self-assessments on six areas of personal growth for evaluating managerial competences [4]. The personal excellence measure developed by Sanghi seems most heavily based on the influence of cognitive domain on behavioral changes. As noted earlier, the “Personal Excellence Map” (PEM) is a recently developed EI-centric instrument to measure one’s best self on the basis of nearly thirty years of inquiry into how psychological factors and mental processing facilitate or impede performance in career and leadership and management education [4]. Additional insight into the development and learning of PE competences was provided by Hammett in 2008. Key PE competences including Nelson and Low’s EI-centric approach to PE were believed to be teachable through transformational learning process that that move learners forward in achieving increasing levels of personal success and excellence [2].

The influence of emotional intelligence (EI) on holistic personal well-being and health has received much attention in recently years. Based on thirty years of scholarly inquiry into the relevance of emotional cognition to enhancing personal well-being and emotional health, the EI-centric model of PE initiated by Nelson and Low’s emotional learning system was psychometrically examined as a priori construct based on which a new PE measurement tool was developed [2]. The PE measurement, together with a transformational learning model of emotional intelligence, paves the way to a synthesis of positive psychology and transformational approach to arise self awareness of the mind, emotion, and behavior [1] [2].

The five major PE domains, or key systems, measured by the PEM are (a) Guidance and Vision, (b) Commitment and Power, (c) Purpose and Beliefs, (d) Relationships and Support, and (e) Change and Balance [1] [2]. Key skills grouped into each system are shown in Figure 1 below. Definitions of the five key systems and their corresponding PE skills are tabulated in Table 1. Worth noting is that a Chinese version of the short-form Personal Excellence measure for use with university students in Taiwan was translated and psychometrically tested [6]. To ensure quality of the translation, content validity of the translated version was achieved through the

translation technique suggested by the IQOLA group consists of five stages: the translation, the synthesis, the back-translation, the expert committee review and the pre-testing [7]. The short-form Chinese PEM, thus, offers promise as a psychometrically sound and pedagogical feasible alternative to enhance personal excellence levels.

Delphi technique was employed to conduct the AHP survey. The Delphi panelists formed by 9 junior high school principals in Taiwan were invited in the pilot study to identify a three-level PE hierarchy for AHP judgment. Panelists were first asked to qualitatively examine the conceptual framework constructed by Nelson and Low [1] [2]. As a result of the expert panel discussion, the dimensions of Guidance System and Power system were merged into one. In conclusion, four categories (dimensions) inclusive of 16 factors were selected for further AHP analysis. A summary of the hierarchical framework was plotted below in Figure 2 based on the 9 Delphi panelists” discussions.

The same group of 9 experts was invited to conduct AHP judgments in pair-wise comparisons of dimensions and factors structured based on the research hierarchy. A total of 16 factors were included clustered under four dimensions pertaining to the PEM. Saaty [8] explained that pairwise comparisons of AHP questionnaires allow participants to judge a value on a1 to 9 scaling to rate the relative importance between pairs of 2nd-level factors under particular 1st-level factors (dimensions) with respect to a given goal. The pairwise comparison procedure facilitates experts independently evaluate the relative importance of factors at each level which contribute to the overall weights to the goal [8].

Expert Choice 11.5, a software package, was used to perform this stage of the analysis for obtaining dimension/factor weights and ranking. AHP questionnaire survey result was examined for its validity based on Satty’s consistency test, which provides a measure of consistency of AHP judgments by the participants. A consistency ratio (C.R.) is computed to measures how far decision-makers” judgments are from perfect consistency. It is calculated by dividing C.I. by Random Index (R.I.) [8].

According to Saaty [8], the 1st-level factor matrix size in the present study is 3, and the R.I. is 0.58. Therefore, if the C.R. is less than 0.10, the judgments are reasonably consistent and the pair-wise comparisons of the present study were acceptable. If the C.R. is larger than 0.10, the decision-makers are required to reevaluate their judgments. Figure 3 above showed that the overall inconsistency = 0.08 (i.e. C.I. = 0.08), indicating that the

present AHP judgments received an overall C.R. of 0.13, which exceeded the acceptable level of consistency. The researchers, therefore, conduct the 2nd round expert panel for the purpose of qualitatively modifying the ranking result. Result of the 2nd round Delphi showed that no further comments and opinions were provided by the 9 experts participating in the study. It was concluded that the 9 panelists reached consensus on the final weights and rankings of factors computed by the Expert Choice 11.5.