Unit 14- Personality Assessments Flashcards
Personality
an be defined as the distinctive and characteristic patterns of thought, emotions and behavior that define an individual’s personal style of interaction with the physical and social environment. It is a pattern of behavior and thinking that prevails across time and situations that makes one person different from another.
Personality assessments
is a systematic procedure of observing human behavior and personality. It is a measurement or appraisal of personality which is now widely used in our society as an important data collection instrument for decision making. Personality tests are used to help determine how your personality relates to your career choices.
Types of personality tests
Objective tests, projective tests and personality inventories
Personality Inventories
Personality Questionnaires and Inventories bring together a broad series of questions regarding a person’s personality as it relates to the gathering of information. It starts with the simple questions that are easily understood and encourages responses. It must be structured in a systematic way that can prove its reliability and validity and it must be standardized on a given population. An example of this would be the CAPE and CXC Examinations developed for within the Caribbean.
Advantages of Personality Inventories are it is relatively simple to construct and it is reliable due to internal consistency, it measures the same variable and test re-test reliability, where the test taken by a particular group is administered to the same group on a different occasion and the score should remain the same. They are easy to use which is very important, they are quick to administer, they can be administered to large groups and they can also be scored by people with minimum training in psychology. Most important though is that personal inventories can be standardized and they can be computerized for ease of use.
Some of the disadvantages of personality inventories are they are too simplistic to capture the full richness of human personality because the answers are either short or unanswerable. Distortion is a major problem in personality inventories because candidates’ response will not be entirely honest and the tendency to agree with an item on the questionnaire regardless of the content. They may respond in an acceptable way for example, to working in a multiethnic work environment when in fact they do have a problem working in a multiethnic work environment.
Objective personality tests
are tests used measure personality that can be scored objectively. Much like classroom tests, it must contain multiple choice and true/false items. The questions on the test are unambiguous and the responses are very specific, there are also strict rules for scoring on the responses.
The purpose for the development of the test was originally to produce an objective, reliable method for identifying personality traits as it related to a person’s mental health. For instance it would provide a specific means of evaluating just how effective psychotherapy was.
The current revised version of this test the MMPI-2 has a sample of people that is representative ethnically and geographically than the original sample (Graham, 1990). The new version has five hundred and sixty seven questions grouped into ten (10) clinical scales and four (4) validity scales. The clinical scales include a number of diagnostic terms that are traditionally used to categorize psychiatric patients, such as depression, paranoia or hypochondriacs and a particular item can be used on more than one scale.
The four validity scales:-The? Scale (cannot say); The L Scale (lie); The F scale (frequency) and The K Scale were devised to provide the tester with the assurance that the participants are responding to the questions reliably and accurately, they can read and understand the questions asked.
The ? Scale (cannot say) is the number of questions not answered and a high score on this scale indicates that the person saw the questions asked either irrelevant or that the person was evading issues that may have been painful.
The L Scale (lie) has items such as ‘my table manners at home are not quite the same as when I’m out with company’. A person who disagrees with questions of this nature is almost certainly not telling the truth. A high score on the L scale suggests the need for caution in interpreting other scales and reveals something about the participant’s personality.
The F Scale (frequency) consists of questions that are answered one way by 90% of the normal population. A high score on this scale indicates carelessness, poor reading ability or very unusual personality traits.
The K Scale (defensiveness) was devised to identify people who tried to hide their feelings, to guard against internal conflict that may cause emotional distress.
Projective personality tests
are unstructured personality measures in which a person is shown a series of ambiguous stimuli, such as pictures, ink blots or incomplete drawings. The person is then asked to describe what they see in each stimulus or to create stories that reflect the theme of the drawing or picture. Projective tests are designed to be ambiguous so that the person’s answer will reveal more than just agreeing and disagreeing.
Although the interpretation of the people’s responses to the Rorschach Inkblot Test was originally based on the psychoanalytical theory, many investigators have used it in an empirical manner, where a number of scoring methods were devised and correlated with clinical diagnoses.
Another popular projective test is the Thematic Apperception Test, where a person is shown a series of ambiguous pictures that has people. The person is then asked to make up stories about the people in the picture, about what they were thinking, how the situation developed and what the final outcome will be. It is thought that the person will project themselves into the situation and their stories will reflect their own need.
Some advantages of Projective Tests are firstly, it is a rich source of data because of the different responses to the stimuli that the tests produce when administered to different individuals, you get different perspectives to study that were identified. Secondly, they are usually used by clinicians who have to deal with subtle aspects of human personality that are not easy to categorize and describe. Thirdly, brilliant results appeared to have been achieved with the use of these projective tests. Finally, the results from the Rorschach Inkblot Test are definitely unique data from which there is no other substitute.
Some disadvantages in Protective Tests are firstly, they tend to be low in reliability and validity because of the subjectivity of scoring. Studies of the validity of projective techniques show usually rather low validity. Eysenck (1959) has claimed that projective tests are nothing more than vehicles for riotous imaginations of clinicians. Secondly, there is no real theory of projective testing because the rationale of these tests involve the participant to project their inner conflicts and anxieties on the stimuli that taps into the deeper recesses of the mind. This is quite different to the psychoanalytic interpretation of the defense mechanism projection, which is projecting unacceptable traits onto others. Thirdly, most projective tests require considerable training in their administration, scoring, and interpretation. This has to be done individually and takes a long time to complete and score. Finally, there are the contextual effects on scores, the ethnicity of the tester, ethnicity of the subject, what the subjects believe the test to be about, the attitude of the tester or the gender
