Personality Assessment Techniques

Personality Assessment

• The goal of personality assessment is to identify the discrepancy between the perceived actual self and the ideal self.
• Different formats of a frame of reference include adjective checklists and sentence completion.
• Adjective checklists require the assessment to check off adjectives from a list that apply to them.
• Sentence completion involves completing an incomplete sentence, revealing the assessee's feelings about themselves.
• Nomothetic approach aims to determine the strength of a limited number of personality traits in all people.
• Idiographic approach focuses on each individual's unique combination of personality traits, without attempting to categorize them based on a set of traits.
• Normative approach interprets the test taker's response in relation to a larger population.
• Ipsative approach interprets the test taker's response in relation to the strength of measured traits for that same individual.
• Common issues in personality test development involve the target population, test format (self-report vs rater), content area sampled, response style, and item format.

Personality

• Personality refers to an individual's unique set of psychological traits that remain relatively stable over time.
• Personality assessment measures and evaluates various psychological aspects such as traits, states, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humor, cognitive and behavioral styles, and individual characteristics.

Personality Traits, Types, and States

• Personality traits are attributions made to identify consistent patterns in behavior.
• Personality types are constellations of traits that correspond to a specific personality category within a taxonomy.
• Hippocrates classified people into four types:
  • Melancholic
  • Phlegmatic
  • Choleric
  • Sanguine

Personality Type Systems

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) suggests individuals have definite preferences in perceiving and judging people, events, situations, and ideas.
• John Holland categorized people into six personality types:
  • Artistic
  • Enterprising
  • Investigative
  • Social
  • Realistic
  • Conventional

Personality Profiles

• Personality profile is a narrative description, graph, table, or other representation of an individual's characteristics based on the results of a personality assessment.
• Common errors in personality assessments include error of central tendency, where assessors rate everyone near the midpoint of a rating scale.
• It is crucial to consider the cultural background of the assessee during assessment, as cultural diversity can impact the accuracy of the results.

Response Styles in Personality Assessments

• Response style refers to a consistent pattern of responding to test items or interview questions regardless of the content.
• Impression management is a technique used to manipulate others' impressions by selectively disclosing information, possibly including false information, while suppressing other information.
• Enhancement, denial, and self-deception can affect the validity of personality assessment results.
• Validity scales are subscales designed to assess the honesty of the test taker's responses and detect potential response style bias.

Where Personality Assessments are Conducted

• Traditional sites for personality assessment include schools, clinics, hospitals, academic research laboratories, counseling centers, and the offices of psychologists and counselors.

How Personality Assessments are Structured and Conducted

• Scope refers to the breadth of the evaluation, ranging from a general inventory to a more specific focus.
• Locus of control refers to an individual's perception of the source of their experiences.
  • Internal locus of control attributes events to their own actions.
  • External locus of control attributes events to external factors such as fate or the actions of others.
• Personality assessments can be theory-based or atheoretical.
• Procedures for personality assessment include face-to-face interviews, computer-administered tests, behavioral observation, paper-and-pencil tests, case history review, portfolio evaluation, and physiological response recording.
• Structured interviews require the interviewer to follow a specific interview guide, limiting flexibility in questioning.
• Graphology involves analyzing handwriting to learn about the individual.

Frame of Reference and Q-sort Technique

• Frame of reference refers to aspects of the focus of exploration, such as the time frame (past, present, future) and other contextual factors.
• Q-sort technique involves sorting statements according to their perceived rank order, ranging from most descriptive to least descriptive.

Explore various methods used in personality assessment to reveal the discrepancies between perceived and ideal selves. This quiz covers different approaches, including nomothetic, idiographic, normative, and ipsative frameworks, along with practical formats like adjective checklists and sentence completion. Test your understanding of these concepts and their applications.