1. Personality Assessment

2. What is Personality? Aiken (2003) defines personality as “a composite of cognitive abilities, interests, attitudes, temperament, and other individual differences in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.”

3. Important Definitions:

4. Factor analysis identifies the number of traits underlying a set of items on an inventory. Example: NEO.

5. Purposes

6. Two Major Divisions:

7. Test Construction Strategies:

8. Test Construction Strategies

9. NEO-PI Series  Based on the “Big Five” Model (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, & Conscientiousness): all descriptions of personality can be placed in one of these five categories.  Norm-referenced test: an examinee’s scores are compared to the standardization group and expressed as T- scores (M = 50, SD = 10).

10. Big-Five

11. Big-Five

12. MBTI  Based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality.  Examinees are assessed on four dichotomous dimensions, resulting in 16 code-types.

13. MBTI: 4 bipolar dimensions Extroversion....... Introversion Sensation............ iNtuition Thinking.............. Feeling Judging............ Perceiving

14. Problems with MBTI 

15. MMPI/MMPI-2

16. Examples of MMPI-2 Scales  Depression.  Psychopathic deviate.  Paranoia.  Schizophrenia.  Hypomania.  Social Introversion.  Health Concerns.  Cynicism.  Type A.  Family Problems.  Ego Strength.  College Maladjustment.  Marital Distress Scale.  Self-Alienation.  Somatic Complaints.  Need for Affection.  Dominance.  Addiction Potential Scale.

17. Special Applications:

18. Response Sets: responding to the structure, rather than the content, of test items  Social Desirability.  Faking Good or Bad.  “Yea” Saying (acquiescence).  Constant Errors: selecting the same response over and over.  Central Tendency Error: tendency to respond in the middle of a rating system.

19. Projective Techniques

20. Examples:  Word Associations.  Sentence Completions.  Draw-A-Person Test.  Rorschach Inkblot Test.  Thematic Apperception Test.  Play materials with children.

21. Projective Techniques