Personality Assessment in Counseling

Personality Assessment

• Helps counselors understand individual behavior to make predictions or decisions
• Provides a picture of an individual's enduring personality traits and transient personality states

Assessment Centers

• Workshops where people do various activities to judge job performance
• Fair and predictive of work performance

Intelligence

• General intelligence (g factor) suggests that there's one overall intelligence affecting task performance
• Abilities (like skills) are stable over time and can appear in different areas (e.g., thinking, physical, seeing and hearing)

Psychological Inventories

• California Psychological Inventory (CPI)
  • Self-administered, true/false statements for "normal" people aged 12-70
  • Assess personality dimensions, attitudes, and feelings
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
  • Categorizes preferences into four areas: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuitive, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving
• NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R)
  • Based on the Five Factor Model of personality: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness
  • 240 statements, self-report, 5-point scale

Other Inventories

• 16PF Questionnaire
  • Comprehensive measure of adult personality traits
  • Widely used for treatment planning, counseling, and hiring
• Rorschach Inkblot Test
  • Assesses individual perception of the world
  • Analyzes inkblot responses to understand emotions, cognition, and relationships

Models of Intelligence

• Vernon's model combines the g factor with specific factors
• CHC model: general intelligence (g) at the top, with broad cognitive abilities and specific cognitive abilities below

Nonverbal Intelligence

• Nonverbal IQ (NVIQ) tests problem-solving without language
• Includes visual puzzles, memory, and number problems with pictures

Making Personality Tests

• Rational approach: uses logic and deduction to create test questions
• Criterion group approach: selects questions that distinguish between groups (e.g., schizophrenic vs. non-schizophrenic)
• Factor analysis: condenses numerous personality traits into fewer dimensions of personality
• Combined approaches: uses a combination of rational, theory-based, criterion group, and factor analysis### Projective Techniques
• The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) involves presenting black-and-white picture cards to examinees, who are then asked to create stories about each picture.
• The examiner asks follow-up questions to understand the examinee's story, including the events leading up to the scene, the characters' thoughts and feelings, and the outcome.

Verbal Projective Techniques

• Verbal expressive projective techniques allow counselors to understand personality elements through verbal stimuli and responses.
• Examples of projective questions include "If you could be anything you wanted to be, what would you be?" and "If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?"

Projective Drawings

• Projective drawings are a type of assessment procedure often used with children and adolescents.
• Drawings are thought to contain nonverbal clues and symbolic messages about a child's self-concept, motivations, and desires.
• The Draw-a-Person test (DAP) is a common technique, where a child is asked to draw a picture of a whole person, and then questioned about the drawing.

Scoring Systems

• Koppitz's scoring system focuses on 30 emotional indicators in children's drawings, distinguishing between normally adjusted and emotionally disturbed children.

Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI)

• The QOLI is a brief, comprehensive measure of a person's overall satisfaction with life, based on how well their needs, goals, and wishes are being met in important areas.
• The inventory consists of 32 items, with satisfaction ratings summarized on a profile report ranging from –6 (extreme dissatisfaction) to 6 (extreme satisfaction).

Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI)

• The SEI assesses attitudes toward the self in general and in specific contexts, with five scales for self-esteem in relation to general self, social self, home, school, and a lie scale.

PIERS-HARRIS CHILDREN'S SELF-CONCEPT SCALE, 2ND EDITION

• This instrument is a 60-item self-report questionnaire that assesses self-concept in children ages 7 to 18.

Response Style

• Response style refers to the ways in which a test taker responds to an item in a characteristic manner that distorts test results.
• Common response styles include Social Desirability, Acquiescence, Nonacquiescence, Deviance, and Extreme Responding.