About Personality Assessment

Personality assessment, the measurement of personal characteristics. Assessment is an end result of gathering information intended to advance psychological theory and research and to increase the probability that wise decisions will be made in applied settings (e.g., in selecting the most promising people from a group of job applicants). The approach taken by the specialist in personality assessment is based on the assumption that much of the observable variability in behaviour from one person to another results from differences in the extent to which individuals possess particular underlying personal characteristics (traits). The assessment specialist seeks to define these traits, to measure them objectively, and to relate them to socially significant aspects of behaviour. A distinctive feature of the scientific approach to personality measurement is the effort, wherever possible, to describe human characteristics in quantitative terms. How much of a trait manifests itself in an individual? How many traits are present? Quantitative personality measurement is especially useful in comparing groups of people as well as individuals. Do groups of people from different cultural and economic backgrounds differ when considered in the light of their particular personality attributes or traits? How large are the group differences? Overt behaviour is a reflection of interactions among a wide range of underlying factors, including the bodily state of the individual and the effects of that person’s past personal experiences. Hence, a narrowly focused approach is inadequate to do justice to the complex human behaviour that occurs under the constantly changing set of challenges, pleasures, demands, and stresses of everyday life. The sophisticated measurement of human personality inescapably depends on the use of a variety of concepts to provide trait definitions and entails the application of various methods of observation and evaluation. Personality theorists and researchers seek to define and to understand the diversity of human traits, the many ways people have of thinking and perceiving and learning and emoting. Such nonmaterial human dimensions, types, and attributes are constructs—in this case, inferences drawn from observed behaviour. Widely studied personality constructs include anxiety, hostility, emotionality, motivation, and introversion-extroversion. Anxiety, for example, is a concept, or construct, inferred in people from what they say, their facial expressions, and their body movements. Personality is interactional in two senses. As indicated above, personal characteristics can be thought of as products of interactions among underlying psychological factors; for example, an individual may experience tension because he or she is both shy and desirous of social success. These products, in turn, interact with the types of situations people confront in their daily lives. A person who is anxious about being evaluated might show debilitated performance in evaluative situations (for example, taking tests), but function well in other situations in which an evaluative emphasis is not present. Personality makeup can be either an asset or a liability depending on the situation. For example, some people approach evaluative situations with fear and foreboding, while others seem to be motivated in a desirable direction by competitive pressures associated with performance. Measuring constructs Efforts to measure personality constructs stem from a variety of sources. Frequently they grow out of theories of personality; anxiety and repression (the forgetting of unpleasant experiences), for example, are among the central concepts of the theory of psychoanalysis. It is understandable that efforts would be made to quantify one’s degree of anxiety, for example, and to use the score thus obtained in the assessment of and in the prediction of future behaviour. Among the major issues in the study of personality measurement is the question of which of the many personality constructs that have been quantified are basic or fundamental and which can be expected to involve wasted effort in their measurement because they represent poorly defined combinations of more elemental constructs; which measurement techniques are most effective and convenient for the purpose of assessment; and whether it is better to interview people in measuring personality, or to ask them to say, for example, what an inkblot or a cloud in the sky reminds them of. Efforts to measure any given personality construct can fail as a result of inadequacies in formulating or defining the trait to be measured and weaknesses in the assessment methods employed. An investigator might desire to specify quantitatively the degree to which individuals are submissive in social and competitive situations. His effectiveness will depend on the particular theory of submissiveness he brings to bear on the problem; on the actual procedures he selects or devises to measure submissiveness; and on the adequacy of the research he performs to demonstrate the usefulness of the measure. Each of these tasks must be considered carefully in evaluating efforts to measure personality attributes. The methods used in personality description and measurement fall into several categories that differ with regard to the type of information gathered and the methods by which it is obtained. While all should rely on data that come from direct observations of human behaviour if they are to have at least the semblance of scientific value, all may vary with regard to underlying assumptions, validity, and reliability (consistency, in this case). Assessment methods Personality tests provide measures of such characteristics as feelings and emotional states, preoccupations, motivations, attitudes, and approaches to interpersonal relations. There is a diversity of approaches to personality assessment, and controversy surrounds many aspects of the widely used methods and techniques. These include such assessments as the interview, rating scales, self-reports, personality inventories, projective techniques, and behavioral observation. The interview In an interview the individual under assessment must be given considerable latitude in “telling his story.” Interviews have both verbal and nonverbal (e.g., gestural) components. The aim of the interview is to gather information, and the adequacy of the data gathered depends in large part on the questions asked by the interviewer. In an employment interview the focus of the interviewer is generally on the job candidate’s work experiences, general and specific attitudes, and occupational goals. In a diagnostic medical or psychiatric interview considerable attention would be paid to the patient’s physical health and to any symptoms of behavioral disorder that may have occurred over the years. Two broad types of interview may be delineated. In the interview designed for use in research, face-to-face contact between an interviewer and interviewee is directed toward eliciting information that may be relevant to particular practical applications under general study or to those personality theories (or hypotheses) being investigated. Another type, the clinical interview, is focused on assessing the status of a particular individual (e.g., a psychiatric patient); such an interview is action-oriented (i.e., it may indicate appropriate treatment). Both research and clinical interviews frequently may be conducted to obtain an individual’s life history and biographical information (e.g., identifying facts, family relationships), but they differ in the uses to which the information is put. Although it is not feasible to quantify all of the events occurring in an interview, personality researchers have devised ways of categorizing many aspects of the content of what a person has said. In this approach, called content analysis, the particular categories used depend upon the researchers’ interests and ingenuity, but the method of content analysis is quite general and involves the construction of a system of categories that, it is hoped, can be used reliably by an analyst or scorer. The categories may be straightforward (e.g., the number of words uttered by the interviewee during designated time periods), or they may rest on inferences (e.g., the degree of personal unhappiness the interviewee appears to express). The value of content analysis is that it provides the possibility of using frequencies of uttered response to describe verbal behaviour and defines behavioral variables for more-or-less precise study in experimental research. Content analysis has been used, for example, to gauge changes in attitude as they occur within a person with the passage of time. Changes in the frequency of hostile reference a neurotic makes toward his parents during a sequence of psychotherapeutic interviews, for example, may be detected and assessed, as may the changing self-evaluations of psychiatric hospital inmates in relation to the length of their hospitalization. Sources of erroneous conclusions that may be drawn from face-to-face encounters stem from the complexity of the interview situation, the attitudes, fears, and expectations of the interviewee, and the interviewer’s manner and training. Research has been conducted to identify, control, and, if possible, eliminate these sources of interview invalidity and unreliability. By conducting more than one interview with the same interviewee and by using more than one interviewer to evaluate the subject’s behaviour, light can be shed on the reliability of the information derived and may reveal differences in influence among individual interviewers. Standardization of interview format tends to increase the reliability of the information gathered; for example, all interviewers may use the same set of questions. Such standardization, however, may restrict the scope of information elicited, and even a perfectly reliable (consistent) interview technique can lead to incorrect inferences. Rating scales The rating scale is one of the oldest and most versatile of assessment techniques. Rating scales present users with an item and ask them to select from a number of choices. The rating scale is similar in some respects to a multiple choice test, but its options represent degrees of a particular characteristic. Rating scales are used by observers and also by individuals for self-reporting (see below Self-report tests). They permit convenient characterization of other people and their behaviour. Some observations do not lend themselves to quantification as readily as do simple counts of motor behaviour (such as the number of times a worker leaves his lathe to go to the restroom). It is difficult, for example, to quantify how charming an office receptionist is. In such cases, one may fall back on relatively subjective judgments, inferences, and relatively imprecise estimates, as in deciding how disrespectful a child is. The rating scale is one approach to securing such judgments. Rating scales present an observer with scalar dimensions along which those who are observed are to be placed. A teacher, for example, might be asked to rate students on the degree to which the behaviour of each reflects leadership capacity, shyness, or creativity. Peers might rate each other along dimensions such as friendliness, trustworthiness, and social skills. Several standardized, printed rating scales are available for describing the behaviour of psychiatric hospital patients. Relatively objective rating scales have also been devised for use with other groups. Rating scales often take a graphic form: To what degree is John shy? ||||| not at allslightlymoderatelyveryextremely A number of requirements should be met to maximize the usefulness of rating scales. One is that they be reliable: the ratings of the same person by different observers should be consistent. Other requirements are reduction of sources of inaccuracy in personality measurement; the so-called halo effect results in an observer’s rating someone favourably on a specific characteristic because the observer has a generally favourable reaction to the person being rated. One’s tendency to say only nice things about others or one’s proneness to think of all people as average (to use the midrange of scales) represents other methodological problems that arise when rating scales are used.