1. Appraisal of Personality
PSY 504: Psychological Measurement

2. Personality Assessment
What is it? / How can it be measured?
There still remains much debate about the precise definition of personality and how to measure it
Personality assessment can:
Provide clarity in identifying client problems
Help select interventions
Assists in treatment decisions
Contribute to structure of counseling relationship

3. Personality Assessment
Informal personality assessments:
Observation
Interviewing
Formal personality assessments:
Structured personality instruments – clients respond to a fixed set of questions or items
Projective techniques – clients are asked to describe, tell a story, or respond in some way to relatively unstructured stimuli; intent is often less obvious with projective techniques than with a structured inventory

4. Informal Assessment Techniques
Observation
Most common method used
Counselor biases in interpreting observations?
Can be problems with: selective recall, selective interpretation, and preexisting assumptions
Subjectivity is a persistent problem
Reliability – unsystematic error
e.g., counselor may perceive a client with sluggish speech and frequent yawns as disinterested when, in fact, these behaviors may be due to the client staying up late the night before
Counselors should look for consistency in their own observations
Validity concerns – representativeness and generalizability
Because the time the client spends with the counselor is not long (e.g., 1 hour during an intake) the observations are restricted to a small sample of behaviors, which may not represent the client’s typical behaviors

5. Informal Assessment Techniques
Interviewing
Diagnostic v. descriptive
Diagnostic assessments/interviews are used to identify issues and possible disorders consistent with a diagnostic taxonomy (DSM-5)
Descriptive assessments/interviews are used when the purpose is to describe aspects of the client (focus of this chapter)
Quality of questions can have a strong influence on the value of the assessment
Important to be direct in asking questions specific to the purpose of the assessment
Similar reliability and validity concerns as observation

6. Structured Personality Inventories
Methods of constructing personality inventories
Content-related procedure
Follows a rational approach to item development, with items directly relating to the personality attributes being measured (e.g., content scales of the MMPI-2)
Personality theory
Construct validation procedures are used to determine if the instrument actually measures the tenets of the theory (e.g., MBTI)
Empirical criterion keying
Items are selected based on their relationship to some external criterion rather than on (just) their content (e.g., MMPI-2)
Factor analysis
Examines the interrelationships of items and determines the similarities of the items that group together
The “Big Five” (e.g., NEO-PI-3)

7. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory 2 (MMPI-2)
Criterion-keyed instrument
Designed to differentiate those individuals with psychopathology as compared with normal individuals
Used to diagnose emotional disorders, but is also intended for nondiagnostic activities
Has 567 items to which client responds, “true,” “false,” or “cannot say”
Has an 8th grade reading level and an audio version is available for clients whose reading level is not sufficient
Is available in English, Hmong, and Spanish
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory – Adolescent Version (MMPI-A)

8. MMPI-2
MMPI-2 norming group of 2,600 selected to match 1980 census data
The norming group has received some criticism for including a high proportion of individuals with advanced educational backgrounds and higher-status occupations
There is also been some debate about racial bias
Others have argued that differences among ethnic groups on the MMPI-2 have not been found to be statistically significant
It is recommended that with clients of color, counselors need to take into account acculturation, socioeconomic status, and education
Contains validity scales, basic/clinical scales, content scales, and supplemental scales

9. MMPI-2 Some key Validity Scales
Variable Response Inconsistency (VRIN) – helps determine if the person randomly marked answers or had difficulty understanding the items (consists of paired items in which the content is very similar or opposite)
True Response Inventory (TRIN) – measures “yea-saying” (mark most/all items true) or “nay-saying” (mark most/all items false)
Infrequency (F) Scale – helps determine if the individual is faking or attempting to exaggerate symptoms
Lie (L) Scale – provides an indication of the degree to which the individual is trying to look good
Correction (K) Scale – measures defensiveness or guardedness (more subtle than the L scale)

10. MMPI-2 Basic/Clinical Scales
In interpreting MMPI-2 scores, the term elevated is often used to indicate that the T score on that scale is above 65
An interpretation may also include the term moderately elevated, which indicates that the T score is between 60 and 65
Other scales (besides elevated) should also be examined to identity possible strengths and coping skills
The clinical scales should not be interpreted in isolation because the entire profile must be taken into account

11. MMPI-2
Basic/Clinical Scales

12. MMPI-2
Content Scales

13. MMPI-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF)
Tellegen et al. (2003) revamped the building of clinical scales based on combining factor-analytic methods with construct-oriented scale development
Known as the Restructured Clinical Scales (9 total)
Not intended as a replacement of MMPI-2 but as an alternative
338 items = less time to complete

14. MMPI-2-RF

15. NEO – Personality Inventory-3 (NEO-PI-3)
Research suggests personality can best be described by 5 factors:
I – Extroversion (or Surgency)
II – Agreeableness
III – Conscientiousness
IV – Neuroticism (or Emotional Stability)
V – Openness to Experience (or Intellect)
Factors appear to apply across diverse cultures
NEO-PI-3 operationalizes these 5 factors of personality
The scales were developed using a combination of rational and factor analytic methods with both normal adults and clinical samples

16. NEO-PI-3
The “Big Five”
Neuroticism – provides a measure of adjustment or emotional stability; measures a tendency toward coping poorly with stress, difficulty controlling impulses, and proclivity toward irrational thoughts
Extroversion – concerns the individual’s tendency to be sociable, assertive, active, and talkative
Openness – measures the degree of openness to a variety of experiences; associated factors include an active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, and intellectual curiosity

17. NEO-PI-3
The “Big Five”
Agreeableness – measures a tendency to be sympathetic, a desire to help others, and a belief that others will reciprocate similarly
Conscientiousness – related to the individual’s ability to control impulses; measures self-control and the ability to plan, organize, and carry out tasks

18. NEO-PI-3 Form S contains is self-report form; 240 items
Form R is observer-report form of instrument; different forms for men and women
Has been criticized on the use for identifying pathology because it was normed on normal adults and the model is based on common characteristics of personality, not on pathology
Is a valid predictor of performance in virtually all occupations
Has potential to be used cross-culturally
Some debate over appropriate names for the 5 factors

19. Other Standardized Personality Instruments
Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI)
22 scales (10 with subscales) with 344 items
4 validity scales
11 clinical scales
5 treatment scales
2 interpersonal scales
Scale development is content-driven
Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)
Includes measures of 16 factors and 5 global factors – Extroversion, anxiety, tough-mindedness, independence, and self-control
Version also exists for adolescents

20. Limitations of Standardized Personality Instruments
Majority are self-report instruments
Clients are able to distort results: “fake good” or “fake bad”
Risk of response sets (e.g., socially desirable, “true” or “yes,” uncommon or less socially desirable, extremes)
To increase validity of profiles:
Inform client of purpose of inventory and how results will be used
Instruct client to answer each question honestly
Ask them to focus on each of the questions

21. Projective Techniques
Provide client with a relatively unstructured stimulus to respond to – examiner takes responses and interprets the meaning
Psychoanalytic concept of projection – individuals’ tendency to project their own drives, defenses, desires, and conflicts onto external situations and stimuli
Thought to uncover more of the client’s unconscious and, thus, provide an indication of the covert or latent traits
More difficult to “fake” responses

22. Projective Techniques
Includes significant subjectivity in interpretation, and extensive training (sort of…) is needed to use these instruments
Common categories:
Associations
Construction
Completions
Arrangement/selection
Expression

23. Projective Techniques
Association techniques
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Client is presented a total of 10 ink blots and asked to give response
Exner’s Comprehensive System is the most widely used interpretive system
Construction techniques
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Client is presented a picture and asked to construct a story based upon that picture (there are a total of 20 [1 blank] but all 20 are rarely given)
Developed to be a measure of Murray’s theory of needs and presses

26. Projective Techniques
Completion techniques
Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank (2nd ed.)
40 sentences are scored for conflict, positive responses, neutral responses, and overall adjustment score
e.g., “I hope…,” “At home…,” “I get upset when…,”
Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study
Derived from Rosenzweig’s theory of frustration and aggression
An individual is presented with a series of cartoons that represent frustrating situations with one of the character’s speech bubbles being blank
The individual fills in the empty cartoon bubble with a response to the frustrating situation

27. Projective Techniques
Arrangement/Selection techniques
Sandplay
Very few empirical studies
Other techniques involving play such as toys and puppets
Expression techniques
Drawing techniques
Draw-a-Person Test (D-A-P)
House-Tree-Person (H-T-P)
Kinetic Family Drawing (K-F-D)

28. Projective Techniques
Strengths (sort of…)
More difficult to fake
Can sometimes identify more complex themes and multidimensional aspects of personality
Can serve as an effective method of establishing rapport
Helpful with children and nonverbal clients
Limitations
Low reliability evidence
Meager validation information
More caution needed when interpreting results
Lack of normative data
Some have race/ethnicity biases (i.e., “false positives”)