Ecological conscientiousness scale for Ph.D. candidates

In their paper "Enhancing criterion-related validity through bottom-up contextualization of personality inventories: The construction of an ecological conscientiousness scale for Ph.D. candidates" (accepted by Human Performance), Butter and Born introduce the concept of "ecological personality scales". From their abstract:

"These are contextualized inventories with a high ecological validity. They are developed in a bottom-up or qualitative way and combine a relatively high trait specificity with a relatively high situational specificity. An ecological conscientiousness or time management scale for Ph.D. candidates was developed. It significantly predicted Ph.D. performance criteria and showed incremental validity beyond Big Five (Study 1) and narrow trait and frame-of-reference scales (Study 2). These findings suggest that an ecological approach may contribute to further improving the criterion validity of personality measures."

As they write in their discussion on the implications for practice,

"Opinion surveys among Ph.D. candidates indicate that they experience a high need for a more personalized coaching relation with their advisors [...]. This suggests that lack of coaching may be a factor that contributes to the high drop-out rates in The Netherlands, and thus to personal, social and economic losses. We believe that the situation in other countries will be rather similar.
Accordingly, the practical aim of this study was to improve personality-based prediction of the performance of Ph.D. candidates, which is important to improve selection and competency management in general for Ph.D. candidates. We focused on conscientiousness in this study because this construct is the most consistent predictor of job performance over a wide range of jobs [...].With respect to selection, the interviews indicate there is reason to believe that the personal competencies needed for specific projects are not always examined when selecting Ph.D. candidates for projects. Ecological personality scales can play a role here.
As for coaching and training purposes, for example, time management training could be offered to candidates scoring low on ecological conscientiousness at an early stage, that is, before any delay in the progress of the research work actually occurs. Also, we think that our findings may help to fine-tune the management style by Ph.D. advisors. Candidates scoring low on time management might make more research progress when a clear form of structure is provided to them by their advisors, for example by setting out milestones in the first year of the research work. Until now, not much was known on this topic.
Finally, our results suggest that ecological scales are worth considering as a strategy to improve the validity of personality instruments in all situations where the economies of scale that are needed to enable and justify the development of tailor-made instruments can be realized."