personality test

n. A group of procedures designed to quantify or classify some aspect of personality in an individual. Personality tests are used for psychological research, clinical assessment, and psychodiagnosis and in screening and selection of job candidates for many occupations. Traditionally, personality tests have been grouped into two classes, labeled objective tests and projective tests. The term objective test generally refers to questionnaires, and the term projective test refers to a group of procedures that use an incomplete or ambiguous stimulus and an open-ended response format. However, contemporary experts in personality assessment increasingly recognize that the terms objective and projective are based on antiquated theories of how these tests operate and carry misleading connotations about the specific tests to which they refer. All personality tests may be considered more or less objective to the extent that they use a standardized method of administration and a reliable scoring procedure. Many tests also have norms based on a large sample of respondents who are representative of the population for which the test will be applied. Some personality tests do not have norms, restricting their usage to research purposes.

Questionnaire tests are the most commonly used procedure in personality assessment. This method uses a fixed list of adjectives, phrases, or statements, and the respondent judges how well each item describes his or her personality using a limited set of discrete response options (true/false; yes/no, etc.) or a Likert scale. The popularity of this method stems from the simplicity of scoring and the possibility of testing respondents in groups, via an Internet Web site, or by conventional mail. Most questionnaires are designed to be self-rated; however, several published questionnaires have separate versions that can be completed by third-party informants. Children's behavioral or personality characteristics are often assessed using rating scales completed by parents, teachers, or trained observers. Structured interview methods require a trained interviewer to select the response options to be scored based on the interviewee's responses to a fixed sequence of questions. The Rorschach Inkblot Method remains a commonly used test in clinical assessment and personality research, despite ongoing controversy about the empirical support for the validity of its scoring systems. Narrative techniques, or storytelling procedures, also have a long history in personality assessment; the Thematic Apperception Test and the Picture Story Exercise provide two common stimulus sets. Here the respondent is shown a drawing or photograph and asked to compose a story. The content and style of the story narrative can be used to score a wide variety of personality variables, such as needs and motives, defense mechanisms, or patterns of relating to others. There are several sentence completion procedures available that provide half-finished sentences to be completed by the respondent. These methods, like the narrative techniques, can provide rich qualitative data that suggest recurrent themes, and they can also yield quantitative scores to use for research or clinical applications. The Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT) is an example of a sentence completion procedure with a welldeveloped scoring system. Drawing techniques are another open-ended approach to personality assessment that may be used, especially with children, to gain insight into characteristics that the respondent may not be capable of judging or describing through explicit means. – JK

▶ See also EGO DEVELOPMENT