personality inventory

n. A questionnaire type of personality test that includes several scales to survey a particular domain of interest in personality. For example, several inventories are available to survey clinical conditions or psychopathology, such as the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) or the revised Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2). Existing taxonomies of normal personality differences have given rise to inventories that assess basic trait dimensions, such as the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEOPI-R), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R), and the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF). Inventories are available to identify appropriate careers and occupations, such as the Strong Interest Inventory (SII) or the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS). Many inventories have a hierarchical structure of scores with the major scales being divided into subscales to facilitate more detailed interpretation of the results. A personality inventory may also contain scales to evaluate the test taking style of the respondent, such as positive impression management or malingered psychopathology. Other scales are sometimes used to assess whether the respondent has adequate comprehension of the items or attended sufficiently to the items while selecting the responses. These more basic protocol validity measures use single items that are answered uniformly by cooperative respondents or pairs of items with similar or identical content. Computer programs are available for many major personality inventories that provide narrative interpretation reports. – JK