Personality Measurement || Personality || Bcis Notes

Personality Measurement

Personality Measurement refers to the psychologist’s method to examine an individual’s personality includes; case study, interviews, naturalistic observations, laboratory investigations, and psychological test. In clinical setting personality tests and other assessment methods are used in making adjustments. The technique provides an estimation of the client’s strength and weaknesses and interprets in.

The history of the personality tests can be traced back to the World War-I when a personality test was designed to identify emotionally disturbed personnel in the U.S. Army. They are derived into 3 major categories and they are:

• Inventory tests or Self-reporting techniques
• Projective tests
• Situational tests or behavior studies

A. Inventory tests or Self-reporting techniques

Also called Objective test of personality or paper-pencil test. It consists of formal standardized questionnaires, statements or adjectives with alternative answers to the various items to apply to it and give the tick mark which is counted as a score.

It assumes that it reveals a relationship between the response and the inner ‘real’ trait of an individual. The most frequently used self-report personality inventories are as follows;

1. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory(MMPI)
2. The California Psychological Inventory(CPI)

B. Projective tests

It is ambiguous or unstructured situation into which the subjects may ‘read’ his own ideas, wishes, fear, conflicts, motives, intellectual level, caping techniques and, fantasies which project his strong personality traits.

It provides more freedom for people in their responses than inventories. Projective tests were developed as a protest against the inventories, which were based on structured items. There are two mostly used projective tests and they are;

• Rorschach Test
• Thematic Apperception Test

Differences between them are as follows:

Rorschach Test(RT)	Thematic Apperception Test(TAT)
Developed by a Swiss psychiatrist, Hermann Rorschach.	Developed by Henry Murry and Morgan at Harvard University.
He dropped ink into a piece of paper and folded in half, creating symmetrical patterns to make the test.	TAT means a readiness to perceive in certain ways based on past experiences.
Used 10 symmetrical inkblots irregular in outline, and varied in shading, in which 5 of them are black, white and gray and remaining other colors.	It consists of ambiguous stimuli showing human figures of different age and sex in a variety of activities.
These unstructured cards were used as a diagnostic tool and asked what the subjects saw in the inkblots and responses were recorded.	It is more structured than RT. It consists of 30 black and white pictures plus a blank card form which the subject has to make up stories.
Stages are free-association period, inquiry period and testing of the limits.	TAT is an individual test and each given 20 cards and asked to describe it in a story.

C. Situational tests or behavior studies

Situational judgment tests tend to determine behavioral tendencies, assessing how an individual will behave in a certain situation, and knowledge instruction, which evaluates the effectiveness of possible responses.

Methods used to facilitate behavior studies are as follows:

• Time sampling
• Episode sampling
• Sociometry rating scales, etc.

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