PERSONALITY

ASSESSMENT
METHODS
CHAPTER 13
OBJECTIVE METHODS
 Associated with paper-and-pencil and computer
administered personality tests
 Characteristically short-answer items
 Assessee selects one response from two or more
provided
 Scoring done according to set procedures which do
not need judgment on the part of the scorer
FORMAT OF OBJECTIVE TESTS
 Scored with reference to either the personality
characteristics being measured or the validity of
the respondent’s pattern of responses
 True items indicative of the ABSENCE of the
traits as well as to items endorsed as such by
testtakers, validity of test becomes questionable
ADVANTAGES
 Can be answered quickly, allowing administration
of many items covering varied aspects of the trait
or traits the test is designed to assess
 Well-written items need little explanation
 Can be scored quickly and reliably
 Analysis and interpretation can be as fast,
especially if conducted by computer and custom
software
OBJECTIVITY AS A MATTER OF
DEBATE
 What are your views about the validity of the
construct or theory?
 Lack of objectivity in personality tests (self-
reports)
 They actually employ a short answer format and
provide little room for discretion in terms of
scoring
PROJECTIVE METHODS
 Projective hypothesis: holds that an individual
supplies structure to unstructured stimuli in a
manner consistent with the individual’s own
unique pattern of conscious and unconscious
needs, fears, desires, impulses, conflicts, and ways
of perceiving and responding.
PROJECTIVE METHOD
 Technique of personality assessment in which
some judgment of the assessee’s personality is
made on the basis of performance on a task that
involves some sort of structure to unstructured or
incomplete stimuli
 Inkblots, pictures, words, drawings, and other
things have been used as projective stimuli
PROJECTIVE TESTS VS. SELF-
REPORT METHODS
 Indirect methods of personality assessment
 Task may be to talk about something or someone
rather than himself/herself, and inferences about
the examinee’s personality are made from the
response
 Ability/inclination of examinee to fake and need
for great proficiency in the English language are
greatly minimized.
LESS LINKED TO CULTURE
 Minimal language skills required to respond to or
create a drawing
PROJECTIVE METHODS
 The
most important things about an individual are
what he cannot or will not say. (Frank, 1939)
INKBLOTS AS PROJECTIVE
STIMULI
 The Rorschach: developed by Hermann
Rorschach; form interpretation test using inkblots
as the forms to be interpreted
CONTENTIONS ABOUT THE
RORSCHACH
 Less of a test and more an open and flexible arena
for studying interpersonal transactions
 Exner argued that the inkblots are not completely
ambiguous; task does not necessarily force
projections and that unfortunately, the Rorschach
has been erroneously mislabeled a projective test
for far too long.
RORSCHACH
 10 Cards; no test manual or any administration, scoring,
or interpretation instructions
 There are a number of manuals and handbooks set forth
 Exner System
 RPASS System
 Testing the limits (optional) enables examiner to
restructure situation by asking specific questions that
provide additional information regarding personality
functioning
PHASES OF ADMINISTRATION
 First administration
 Inquiry: second administration; ask what features
of the inkblot played a role in formulating the
testtaker’s percept (perception of an image)
 What made it look like…
 How do you see…
OTHER OBJECTIVES OF LIMIT-
TESTING PROCEDURES
 Identify an confusion or misunderstanding
concerning the task
 Aid examiner in determining if testtaker is able to
refocus percepts given a new frame of reference
 See if a testtaker made anxious by the ambiguous
nature of the task is better able to perform given
this added structure
FORM HYPOTHESES BASED ON
 Content: content category of the response (animal,
human, blood, body parts)
 Location: part of the inkblot used to form the percept
 Determinants: qualities of inkblot that determine what
individual perceives
 Popularity: frequency of a certain response
 Form: how accurately the individual’s perception
matches or fits the corresponding part of the inkblot
PICTURES AS PROJECTIVE
STIMULI
 Earliest uses: Beginning of the twentieth century
 Children gave responses to nine pictures; author
reported that girls were more interested in religious
and moral themes than boys were
 Social Situation Picture Test: projective instrument
that contained pictures relevant to juvenile
delinquents
THEMATIC APPRECEPTION TEST
 Developedby Christiana D. Morgan and Henry
Murray while working at the Harvard
Psychological Clinic in 1935
THEMATIC APPRECEPTION TEST
(TAT)
 Designed as an aid to eliciting fantasy material
from patients in psychoanalysis.
 Stimulus materials consist of 31 cards, 1 of them is
blank
 Different types of pictures, some appear to be real
as a photo, others are surrealistic drawings
TAT MANUAL
 Advised examiners to attempt to find out the
source of the examinee’s story
 Apperception: derived from the verb apperceive
 Apperceive: to perceive in terms of past perceptions
 Source of a story could be a personal experience, a
dream, an imagined event, a book, almost anything
RAW MATERIAL USED IN DERIVING
CONCLUSIONS FROM THE TAT
 Stories as they were told by the examinee
 The clinician’s notes about the way or the manner
in which the examinee responded to the cards
 The clinician’s notes about extra-test behavior and
verbalizations
SYSTEMS OF INTERPRETING
THEMES
 Need: determinants of behavior arising from
within the individual
 Press: determinants of behavior arising from
within the environment
 Thema: a unit of interaction between needs and
press
IN GENERAL
 Guiding principle in interpreting TAT stories
 Identifying with someone (the protagonist) in the
story and that the
 Needs
 Environmental demands
 Conflicts
 Related to concerns, hopes, fears, or desires of thee
xaminee
PSYCHOMETRIC SOUNDNESS OF
TAT
 Lack of standardization and uniformity in
administration, scoring, and interpretation
procedures
 Inter-rater reliability coefficients ranged from
adequate to impressive
SITUATIONAL FACTORS THAT
MAY AFFECT TEST RESPONSES
 Who examiner is
 How test is administered
 Testtaker’s experience prior to and during the test
administration
VALIDITY TAT
 Same amount of motivational information could
be obtained through much simpler, self-report
methods
 Little relation between TAT-derived data and that
derived from self-report
 TAT-derived motivational information: Self-report
measures yielded “self-attributed motives”
 TAT capable of yielding implicit motives
IMPLICIT MOTIVE
 Nonconscious influence on behavior typically
acquired on the basis of experience
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
EXPRESSION OF FANTASY STORIES
AND REAL-LIFE BEHAVIOR
 Tentative at best
 TAT is highly susceptible to faking
VALUE OF TAT IN CLINICAL
ASSESSMENT
 People would project their own motivation when
asked to construct a story from an ambiguous
stimulus
 The clinician who tailors the best administration
OTHER TESTS USING PICTURES
 Hand Test: 9 cards with pictures of hands on them
and a tenth blank card, imagine a pair of hands on
the card and describe what they may be doing.
 Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study: employs
cartoons depicting frustrating situations
ROSENZWEIG PICTURE-
FRUSTRATION STUDY
 Testtaker’s task is to fill in the response of the
cartoon figure being frustrated
 Based on assumption that the testtaker will
identify with the person being frustrated
 Available in all forms for children, adolescents,
and adults
ROSENZWEIG PICTURE-
FRUSTRATION STUDY
 Scored in terms of the type of reaction elicited and
the direction of the aggression expressed:
 Intropunitive: aggression turned inward
 Extrapunitive: outwardly expressed
 Impunitive: agression is evaded so as to avoid or
gloss over the situation
OTHER TESTS
 Apperceptive Personality Test (APT): an attempt
to address some long-standing criticisms of the
TAT
 Emotional tone and draw of stimulus cards
 Multiple choice questions are answered after
WORDS AS PROJECTIVE STIMULI
 Semi-structured techniques
 Word Association Tests: Semistructured, individually
administered, projective technique; present a list of
stimulus words
WORD ASSOCIATION TESTS
 Galton: consisted of presenting a series of unrelated
stimulus words and instructing the subject to
respond with the first word that came to mind
 Cattell and Bryant: first to use cards with stimulus
words printed on them
 Jung: by selecting key words that represented
possible areas of conflict, word association
techniques could be employed for psychodiagnostic
purposes
WORD ASSOCIATION TEST
 Developed by Rapaport, Gil, and Schafer
 First part: Each stimulus word was administered to the
examinee, who had been instructed to respond quickly
with the first word that came to mind; record the time it
took to respond
 Second part: Each stimulus word was again presented to
the examinee; examinee instructed to reproduce original
responses
 Third part: Inquiry; examiner asked questions to clarify
the relationship between stimulus word and the response
KENT-ROSANOFF FREE
ASSOCIATION TEST
 One of the earliest attempts to develop a
standardized test using words as projective stimuli
 100 stimulus words, all commonly used and
believed to be neutral with respect to emotional
impact
SENTENCE COMPLETION TESTS
 Sentence completions stems may be developed for
use in specific types of settings or for specific
purposes
 May be atheoretical or linked very closely to some
theory
ROTTER INCOMPLETE
SENTENCES BLANK
 Most popular standardized sentence completion
test
 Developed for use with populations from grade 9
through adulthood
 Testtakers instructed to respond to each of the 40
incomplete sentence items in a way that expresses
their “real feelings.”
SOUNDS AS PROJECTIVE
STIMULI
 B.F. Skinner: Like auditory inkblots?!?
 Series of recorded sounds much like muffled,
spoken vowels, to which people would be
instructed to associate
 Sounds packaged as a device (verbal summator)
presumably would act as a stimulus for the person to
verbalize certain unconscious material
DIFFERENT TESTS
 Auditory Apperception Test: subject’s task was to
respond by creating a story based on three sounds
played on aphonograph record
 Auditory Sound Association Test
 Auditory Apperception Test
 Developed by Henry Murray; presented subjects
with spoken paragraphs
PRODUCTION OF FIGURE
DRAWINGS
 Source of information about intelligence,
neurological intactness, visual-motor coordination,
cognitive development, and even learning
disabilities
 Appealing source of diagnostic data; instructions
for them can be administered individually or in a
group by nonclinicians (teachers); no materials
other than pencil and paper required
FIGURE DRAWING TEST
 Projectivemethod of personality assessment
whereby the assessee produces a drawing that is
analyzed on the basis of its content and related
variables
DRAW A PERSON
 Presentan 8 ½ by 11 inch white paper and tells the
examinee to draw a person
 Make it the way you think it should be
 Do the best you can
 Draw a person of the opposite sex
DAP PRODUCTIONS
 Evaluated through analysis of various characteristic of the drawing
 Length of time required to complete the picture
 Placement of figures
 Size of figure
 Pencil pressure used
 Symmetry
 Line quality
 Shading
 Presence of erasures
 Facial Expressions
 Posture
 Clothing
 Overall appearance
EXAMPLES
 Placement of figure: how individual functions
within the environment
 Tiny figure: poor self-concept; insecure or depressed
 Picture is too large and doesn’t fit the page:
impulsive
 Light pressure: character disturbance
 Right of page: orientation toward future
 Lower left: Depression with a desire to flee into the
past
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
DRAWING
 Unusually large eyes/ears: suspiciousness, ideas of
reference, paranoid characteristics
 Unusually large breasts: drawn by male, unresolved
oedipal problems with maternal dependence
 Long and conspicuous ties: sexual aggressiveness,
perhaps compensating for hear of impotence
 Buttons: dependent, infantile, inadequate
personality
HOUSE-TREE-PERSON
 Draw a house, tree, and person
 Representation of house and tree are symbolically
significant
KINETIC FAMILY DRAWING
 Derived from Hulse’s Family Drawing test
 Present an 8 ½ by 11 inch sheet of paper and
pencil with eraser
 Draw a person doing something
 Graphic representation of each family member are
analyzed
COLLABORATIVE DRAWING
TECHNIQUE
 Test that provides an occasion for family members
to collaborate on the creation of a drawing –
presumably all the better to “draw together”
DRAW A PERSON: SCREENING
PROCEDURE FOR EMOTIONAL
DISTURBANCE
 DAP:SPED
 Standardized test administration and quantitative
scoring system designed to screen testtakers (6-17)
for emotional problems
 Based on assumption that the rendering of unusual
features in figure drawings signals emotional
problems, one point scored for each such feature
FIGURE DRAWING TESTS
 Although thought to be clinically useful
 Embattled history in relation to psychometric
soundness
 Techniques are vulnerable with regard to the
assumptions that drawings are essentially self-
representations and represent something far more
than drawing ability
CLINICAL USE OF FIGURE
DRAWINGS
 Caution that test are not fool proof
 A person comes across as rife with pathology in an
interview may seem benign on a psychological test
 Can be considered more than tests; involve tasks
that can also serve as stepping-off points for
clients and examiners to discuss and clarify the
picture
COLOR INKBLOT THERAPEUTIC
STORYTELLING
 Therapeutic method
 Originally developed as a culturally responsive
assessment method for use with Japanese clients
 Designed to provide an indirect, nonthreatening
approach to clients’ problems
GENOGRAM
 Graphic presentation of a person’s family relationships
 Therapist’s version of a family tree
 Displays more information than a sample listing of
family members
 Used to identify themes and patterns of behavior in a
family history
 Assists client and therapist to quickly see impact of
family environment
 Three or four generations
PROJECTIVE METHODS IN
PERSPECTIVE
 Used enthusiastically by many clinicians
 Criticized harshly by academics
 Problematic scoring system
PROBLEMS WITH PROJECTIVE
TESTS
 Assumptions
 Situational
Variables
 Psychometric considerations
ASSUMPTIONS
 Stimulus material: not scientifically compelling
 Idiosyncratic nature of responses evoked by
projective stimuli: same responses they may not be
as ambiguous and amenable to projection as
previously assumed
ASSUMPTIONS
 Interpretation of Projective Tests
 Contentions are cherished beliefs accepted without
support of sufficient research validation
 Less subject ot “faking good” on the part of
testtakers
SITUATIONAL VARIABLES
 Tapping personality patterns without disturbing the
pattern being tapped
 Situational variables like examiner’s presence or
absence significantly affected responses of
experimental subjects
 Age of examiner, presence/absence of examiner,
specific instructions, and subtle reinforcement
clues provided
IN ANY GIVEN CLINICAL
SITUATION
 Variables may be placed in the mix
 Interaction of these variables may influence the
clinical judgments
 Simple history taking
 Effect of clinician’s training
 Role perspective
 Patient’s social class
 Motivation to manage a desired impression
PSYCHOMETRIC
CONSIDERATIONS
 Uncontrolled variations in protocol length
 Inappropriate subject samples
 Inadequate control groups
 Poor external criteria
BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT
METHODS
 Behavioral Assessment: emphasizes what a person
does in situations rather than on inferences about
what attributes he has more globally
 Predicting what a person will do is thought to
entail an understanding of the assessee with
respect to antecedent conditions and consequences
of a particular situation
SIGN APPROACH
 More traditional administration of psychological
test or test battery to a client might yield signs that
then could be inferred to relate to the problem
 Sign approach might help put client in touch with
feelings that even she was not aware of before the
assessment.
SAMPLE/BEHAVIORAL
APPROACH
 Examine behavioral diary that client kept and
design an appropriate therapy program on the basis
of the records
BEHAVIOR
 Focus of assessment in behavioral assessment
WHO IS ASSESSED?
 Patient in a closed psychiatric ward
 Client seeking help at a counseling center
 Subject in an academic experiment
WHO IS THE ASSESSOR?
 Highly qualified professional
 Technician/assistant trained to conduct a particular
assessment
WHAT IS MEASURED
 Behavior/behaviorstargeted for assessment vary
 Must be measurable or quantifiable in some way
WHEN IS AN ASSESSMENT MADE
 Times when the problem behavior is most likely to
be elicited
 Various schedules with which behavioral
assessments may be made
TIMELINE FOLLOWBACK (TLFB)
Methodology
 Method of recording the frequency and intensity of
target behavior
WHERE DOES THE ASSESSMENT
TAKE PLACE?
 Preferably in the environment where the targeted
behavior is most likely to occur naturally
WHY CONDUCT BEHAVIORAL
ASSESSMENT?
 Dataderived from behavioral assessment may
have advantages over data derived by other means
 Provide baseline data with which other behavioral
data may be compared
 Provide record of assessee’s behavioral strengths
BEHAVIOR RATING SCALE
 Preprinted sheet on which the observer notes the
presence or intensity of targeted behaviors
 Direct measure: applies to the setting in which the
observed behavior occurs and how closely that
setting approximates the setting in which the
behavior naturally occurs
 Indirect measure: The more removed from the
natural setting, the less direct the measure
OTHER BEHAVIORAL METHODS
 Self-monitoring
 Analogue studies: research investigation in which one or
more variables are similar or analogous to the real
variable the investigator wishes to examine
 Situational performance measure: procedure that allows
for observation and evaluation of an individual under a
standard set of circumstances
 Leaderless group technique: organize people into a
group, carry out a task as an observer records information
ROLE PLAY
 Acting an improvised or partially improvised part
in a simulated situation
PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL
METHODS
 Biofeedback: gauge, display, and record
continuous monitoring of selected biological
processes (pulse or blood pressure)
 Plethysmograph: changes in blood flow
 Penile Plethysmograph: designed to measure
changes of bloodflow to the penis
 Polygraph
UNOBTRUSIVE MEASURE
 Telling physical trace or record
ISSUES IN BEHAVIORAL
ASSESSMENT
 Observer bias
 Observer Error