Week 7 - Types of assessment Flashcards
Define Personality Assessment (4 parts)
The process of evaluating individual differences among people by using (1)tests, (2)interviews, (3)observation, and (4)physiological recordings.
Depending on the psychologist’s background, what are the types of personality assessment?
- Psychoanalytic
- Behaviourist
- Self report inventories
- Biological methods
What are the purposes of personality assessment?
- Helps explain or predict behaviour
- Aids diagnosis and treatment of mental health
- Aids decisions for community placement
- Personnel selection/predicting job performance
What are some examples of unscientific personality tests?
- Galen 130AD: four personality types based on body fluids
- Gall 19C: Phrenology
- Sheldon 1940: body shape
- blood types: determine temperament
- Palmistry
- Graphology: writing style
- Numerology: important numbers
- Astrology
- Favourite colours to indicate personality
What are the sources of personality data?
- self report
- other ratings
- archival measures
- Neuropsychological
- Performance tests
What are three types of self report personality data?
- Direct subjective
- empirical (normed) scales: MMPI
- Factorial scales: Eysenck/EPI/16PF - Indirect projective
- TAT/Rorschach - Structured interview
What are three types of ‘other ratings’ of self report personality data?
- peer ratings
- supervisory ratings
- subordinate ratings
What is a type of archival measure of personality data?
Biographical interview
How do you prepare for an initial appointment?
- Check clinic files
- Outcome of previous contact and services received?
- Referral problem last time and this time? (referral from GP/client’s idea may not describe problem accurately)
- Who was involved?
- Intervention strategies that were/weren’t useful?
What are the 10 steps of an initial interview?
- Establishment of rapport
- General remarks (setting the scene, clients rights and responsibilities)
- Family background
- family history
- interaction
- Developmental/medical background
- Educational background
- Problem-specific information
- FINDS
- ABCs
- Clarification of expectations
- Homework
- Scheduling of next appointment
- Termination of interview
What does FINDS stand for?
Frequency, Intensity, Number of behaviours, Duration, Sense
What does ABCs stand for, and why are they good?
- Antecedents, Behaviour, Consequences
- good to operationalise behaviour
What are some types of neuropsychological tests to get personality data?
- EEG, X-ray, CT scan, MRI (static brain images)
- fMRI (real time observation of brain activity)
- PET scan (scans cell glucose usage)
What are the two types of performance tests used to get personality data?
- Behavioural assessment: what a person does in a particular situation
- Situational settings: testing an individual’s real-life reaction to situations
What are some difficulties with personality assessment?
- Assumptions
- Reliability of measures
What are some assumptions of personality tests?
- Stable over time
- Internality
- Consistency
- Individual differences
What is Walter Mischel’s view on the consistency of personality tests?
- We confuse behaviour-over-time (stability) with behaviour-across-situations (consistency)
- We tend to see people in a limited range of situations
- We may only remember the situations that support the consistency of our view
What are some common item formats of personality tests?
- true-false format
- two-item choice format (like/dislike)
- semantic differential format
- forced-choice format
- adjective checklist
What are some examples of self-report inventories?
- MMPI-2
- Millon Clinical Miltiaxial Inventory (MCMI)
- California Self-report inventory (CPI)
- Cattell’s 16PF
- NEO-PI-R
- Eysenck’s Personality Assessment
Describe the MMPI-2
- 543 true/false/can’t say items
- Produces a personality profile about current/characteristic ways of functioning
- Good reliability and validity
- Has questions to tap into construct validity
- Consists of 10 clinical scales
What are the 10 clinical scales of the MMPI-2?
- Hypochondriasis
- Depression
- Hysteria
- Psychopathic deviate
- Masculinity-femininity
- Paranoia
- Psychasthenia (rigid, anxious, tense, obsessive and compulsive thoughts)
- Schizophrenia
- Hypomania
- Social introversion
Describe the Millon Clinical Miltiaxial Inventory (MCMI)
- Self report adult questionnaire designed and normed for psychiatric populations
- Focused on personality disorders
- Ranked second to MMPI in importance
- 175 items - 28 scales
- Provides information assisting diagnosis
- Good reliability and validity
Describe the California Self-Report Inventory (CPI)
- Often referred to as the “sane man’s” MMPI, as it’s not necessarily measuring maladjustment
- Developed in 1957, revised in 1987
- Self report questionnaire for those aged 12-70
- Often used for personnel selection
- 462 true-false items
- 178 items in common with the MMPI
- Relates well to 5 factor model
- Good reliability, but limited validity studies
- Second most popular test in clinical programs
Describe Cattell’s 16PF
- Most widely used system for categorising and defining personality
- Puts 16 PF into 5 themes
What are the 5 themes of Cattell’s 16PF?
○ Extraversion: Introverted-extraverted
○ Anxiety: low anxiety-easily worried and generally tense
○ Will: Open minded - resolute and determined
○ Independence: Accommodating - Independent and persuasive
○ Self control: Free thinking - structured and inhibited
Describe the NEO-PI-R
• Based on Costa and McCrae’s NEO Five factor inventories
• Two types:
○ NEW-PI-R (240 items): Reliability .90
○ NEO-FFI (60 items): Reliability .80
• NEO-PI measures 30 traits which load onto the five basic dimensions
Describe Eysenck’s Personality Assessment
- Based primarily on physiology and genetics
- Used factor analysis to find (initially) two dominant factors: neuroticism and introversion-extraversion
- Normal people can score high on the neurotic scale
- Later, a third dimension: psychoticism
- (3-factor model: neuroticism, introversion-extraversion, psychoticism)
- Not necessarily forced choice, gives people the options of yes, no, or don’t know
What are the strengths and weaknesses of self-report inventories?
- Employers often use personality profiles in the selection & promotion process, often beyond a test’s capability
- Socially desirable responding
- Acquiescence (agreeing with everything)
- Non-acquiescence
- Deviance
- Gambling/cautiousness (guessing answers)
- Overly positive
- Children don’t understand Likert scales
What are some examples of projective personality tests?
- Association
- Construction
- Inkblot tests
- TAT
- Expression
- Completion
