Summary of Personality assessment: An overview - Chapter 12 - Cohen - 2013.
In the book Theories of Personality Hall and Lindzey wrote 'it is our conviction that no substantive definition of personality can be applied with any generality' and 'personality is defined by the particular empirical concepts which are a part of the theory of personality employed by the observer'. Personality is the unique characteristics of an individual that consists of psychological traits that stay stable over time. This may defined as the measurement and evaluation of psychological traits, states, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humor, cognitive and behavioral styles and/or related individual characteristics.
Personality traits have no precise definition. Allport (1937) said that a trait was a physical entity that is 'bona fide mental structures in each personality'. Holt (1971) wrote that there are real structures inside people that determine their behavior in lawful ways. The most used definition is from Guilford (1959) and he says that personality traits are any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another. Researchers always thought that the personality traits of an individual would stay stable over time. But research now shows that there is a lack of consistency in the personality traits of people when they are in different situations, conformity, authority and extraversion and intraversion.
Personality types are, compared to personality traits, more clearly descriptions of people. John Holland said that people can be categorized as one of the following six personality types: artistic, enterprising, investigating, social, realistic, or conventional. Friedman and Rosenman came up with another personality typology, with only two categories:
A personality profile is a narrative description, graph, tool or other representation of what somebody is like, characteristic wise.
Personality states is a state in which people can be, referring to the quality of the id, ego and superego (Freud). A state is the way in which people show the personality traits they have.
For what type of employment is a person with this type of personality best suited?
How has this patient's personality been affected by neurological trauma?
These questions can be used in a personality assessment. Beyond the why question of personality assessment are several other questions that must be addressed in any overview of the enterprise. Approaches to personality assessment differ in terms of who is being assessed, what is being assessed and where the assessment is conducted, and how the assessment is conducted.
Who is being assessed and who is doing the assessing? Some methods of personality assessment rely on the assessee's own self-report. Some other methods of personality assessment rely on informants other than the person being assessed to provide personality-related information. People typically undergo personality assessment that they, as well as the assessor, can learn something about who they are. The assessment often requires self-report, or a process wherein information about assessees is supplied by the assessees themselves.
Self-report methods are used to explore an assessee's self-concept. The self-concept may be defined as one's attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and related thoughts about oneself. The tool of choice is typically a dedicated self-concept measure. Some measures of self-concept are based on the notion that states and traits related to self-concept, but they can be context-dependent. The term self-concept differentiation refers to the degree to which a person has different self-concepts in different roles.
Sometimes the best available method for the assessment of personality, behavior, or both involves reporting by a third party such as a parent, teacher, peer, supervisor, spouse or a trained observer. You do have to think about problems or biases that can exist when you want to do a personality assessment. The biases that can be apparent are referred to in terms such as leniency error or generosity error and severity error. A general tendency to rate everyone near the midpoint of a rating scale is termed an error of central tendency. In some situations, a particular set of circumstances may create a certain bias, this variety of favorable response bias is sometimes referred to as the halo effect. Also, when making tests you have to think about the sensitivity to cultural diversity and how this can affect the outcome of the test.
What is assessed when a personality assessment is conducted? Personality measures are tools used to gain insight into a wide array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with all aspects of the human experience.
Response style refers to a tendency to respond to a test item or interview question in some characteristic manner regardless of the content of the item or question. Impression management is a term used to describe the attempt to manipulate others' impressions through the selective exposure of some information. Responding to a personality test in an inconsistent, random way may affect the validity of the interpretations of the test data. Because a response style can influence the outcome, one particular type of response style measure is referred to as a validity of the outcome. A validity scale is a subscale of a test designed to assist in judgments regarding how honestly the testtaker responded and whether observed responses were products of response styles, carelessness, or unintentional misunderstanding.
Where are personality assessments conducted? They can actually be conducted everywhere, but you do have to think about distraction possibilities.
How are personality assessments structured and conducted? One dimension of the how of personality assessment concerns its scope. The scope of an evaluation may be very wide, seeking to take a kind of general inventory of an individual's personality. In contrast to instruments and procedures designed to inventory personality as a whole are instruments that are much narrower in terms of what they purport to measure. The locus of control is a person's perception about the source of things that happen to him or her. People who see themselves as largely responsible for what happens to them are said to have an internal locus of control. People who are prone to attribute what happens to them to external factors are said to have an external locus of control.
Personality may be assessed by many different methods, such as face-to-face interviews, computer-administered tests, behavioral observation, paper-and-pencil tests, evaluation of case history data, and recordings of physiological responses. Personality may be assessed by means of an interview, but it may also be assessed by a structured interview.
Another variable relevant to the how of personality measurement concerns the frame of reference of the assessment. In the context of item format and assessment in general, frame of reference may be defined as aspects of the focus of exploration such as the time frame as well as other contextual issues that involve people, places, and events.
Representative of methodologies that can be readily applied in the exploration of varied frames of reference is the Q-sort technique. The Q-sort technique is an assessment technique in which the task is to sort a group of statements from most descriptive to least descriptive. Two other item presentations formats that are readily adaptable to different frames or reference are the adjective checklist format and the sentence completion format.
It can be meaningful to dichotomize measures with respect to the nomothetic and the ideographic approach. Nomothetic approach to assessment is characterized by effort to learn how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people. In contrast to a nomothetic view is the idieographic one. An ideographic approach to assessment is characterized by efforts to learn about each individual's unique constellation of personality traits, with no attempt to characterize each person according to any particular set of traits.
By building validity scales into self-report tests is one way that test developers have attempted to deal with the potential problems. But there has been some debate about whether to incorporate validity scales. Next to this issue, you also have to think about the language in which the assessment is conducted, this because translations not always are exactly alike. The broader issue relevant to the development and use of personality tests with members of a culture different from the culture in which the test was formed concerns the applicability of the norms.
Tools such as logic, theory and data reduction methods are frequently used in the process of developing personality tests. Another tool in the test development process may be a criterion group. Logic and reason in the development of test items is sometimes referred to as the content or content-oriented approach to test development. A typical companion to logic, reason, and intuition in item development is research. Personality measures differ in the extent to which they rely on a particular theory of personality in their development as well as their interpretation. Data reduction methods represent another class of widely used tool in contemporary test development. These methods include several types of statistical techniques collectively known as factor analysis or cluster analysis.
A criterion may be defined as a standard on which a judgment or decision can be made. With regard to scale development, a criterion group is a reference group of testtakers who share specific characteristics and whose responses to test items serve as a standard according to which items will be included in or discarded from the final version of the scale. The process of using criterion groups to develop test items is referred to as empirical criterion keying because the scoring or keying of items has been demonstrated empirically to differentiate among groups of testtakers.
JoHo can really use your help! Check out the various student jobs here that match your studies, improve your competencies, strengthen your CV and contribute to a more tolerant world
There are several ways to navigate the large amount of summaries, study notes en practice exams on JoHo WorldSupporter.
Do you want to share your summaries with JoHo WorldSupporter and its visitors?
Field of study
Add new contribution