PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT:Observational Procedures, Rating Scales

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Personality Psychology PSY 405

Lesson 2

PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT

Personality measurement and assessment procedures are useful in understanding the person. They include:

Interviews

Observation

Rating scales

Personality tests

Projective Tests

1. Interviews:

The interview is the most commonly used procedure in psychological assessment.

Interviews provide an opportunity to ask people for their own descriptions of their problems.

Interviews also allow clinicians to observe important features of a person's appearance and nonverbal

behavior.

Structured Interviews

Assessment interviews vary with regard to the amount of structure that is imposed by the clinician. Some

are relatively open-ended, or nondirective. Structured interviews, in which the clinician must ask each

patient a specific list of detailed questions, are frequently employed for collecting information that will be

used to make diagnostic decisions and to rate the extent to which a person is impaired by psychopathology.

Structured interviews list a series of specific questions that lead to a detailed description of the person's

behavior and experiences. Structured interview schedules provide a systematic framework for the collection

of important diagnostic information, but they don't eliminate the need for an experienced clinician

2. Observational Procedures

Observational skills play an important part in most assessment procedures.

Sometimes the things that we observe confirm the person's self-report, and at other times the person's overt

behavior appears to be at odds with what he or she says. Observational procedures may be either informal

or formal. Informal observations are primarily qualitative. The clinician observes the person's behavior and

the environment in which it occurs without attempting to record the frequency or intensity of specific

responses. Although observations are often conducted in the natural environment, there are times when it is

useful to observe the person's behavior in a situation that the psychologist can arrange and control.

The Mental Status Examination

The mental status examination involves systematic observation of an individual's behavior. This type of

observation occurs when one individual interacts with another. Mental status examination can be structured

and detailed. It covers five categories:

Appearance and behavior

Thought Process

Mood and affect.

Intellectual Function

Perception of person, place and time.

The mental status examination tells us how people think, feel and behave and how these actions might

contribute to explain their problems. So actually, we are doing behavioral assessment of people. This

behavioral assessment is done by using direct observation of an individual's thought, feelings and behavior

in situations or context where the individual is having problems.

3. Rating Scales

Personality Psychology PSY 405

A rating scale is a procedure in which the observer is asked to make judgments that place the person

somewhere along a dimension.

Ratings can also be made on the basis of information collected during an interview. Rating scales provide

abstract descriptions of a person's behavior rather than a specific record of exactly what the person has

done.

These are assessment tools, which are used before the treatment to assess changes in patient's behavior

after the treatment. Brief psychiatric rating scales are usually used and completed by hospital staff to assess

an individual on different constructs related with physical or psychological illness. There are two point

rating scales.

4. Behavioral Coding Systems

Rather than making judgments about where the person falls on a particular dimension, behavioral coding

systems focus on the frequency of specific behavioral events. Some adult clients are able to make records

and keep track of their own behavior--a procedure known as self-monitoring.

5. Personality Inventories

Personality inventories present an elaborate picture of an individual's overall personality including the

traits, the characteristics, the tendency and the styles that are thought to underlie behavior.

The questions in personality inventories are presented in form of statements. These statements are the items

of personality test. Many personality inventories are available such as MMPI Minnesota Multiphasic

Personality Inventory. This test was develop in 1940 and published in 1943. It is based on empirical

approach i.e. the collection and evaluation of data. The individual is presented with statements and the

answers have options like true, false and cannot say. Some of the statements from MMPI are following:

I cry easily

I am happy most of the time.

I believe, I am being followed

MMPI consisted of 550 items. MMPI consists of ten clinical scales, meaning that it diagnosis people on ten

clinical disorders. It has got four validity scales, which include

Lie scale

The F Scale, Infrequency scale,

K scale, The Defensiveness Scale

The Can not say scale

They consist of a series of straightforward statements; the person being tested is typically required to

indicate whether each statement is true or false in relation to an individual.

Some personality inventories are designed to identify personality traits in a normal population, and others

focus more specifically on psychological problems.

The most extensively used personality Inventory is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

(MMPI). The inventory was revised several years ago, and it is currently known as the MMPI-2.

The MMPI-2 is based on 567 statements that cover topics ranging from physical complaints and

psychological states to occupational preferences and social attitudes. Scoring of the MMPI-2 is objective.

After the responses to all questions are totaled, the person receives a numerical score on each of 10 clinical

scales as well as on four validities.

The MMPI not only diagnoses a person on ten clinical scales it also detects sources of invalidities like

lying, carelessness, defensiveness on part of respondent. It attempts to present all information in form of a

profile of scores. This profile of scores across all ten clinical scales and four validity scales is presented as

deviations from general population norms. The normal scale score is a T-score of 50 any score above 50 is

a sign of pathology.

Personality Psychology PSY 405

Before considering the possible clinical significance of a person's MMPI-2 profile, the psychologist will

examine a number of validity scales, which reflect the patient's attitude toward the test and the openness

and consistency with which the questions were answered.

The L (Lie) Scale is sensitive to unsophisticated attempts to avoid answering in a frank and honest manner.

Examples of items of MMPI-II:

1. I like automobile magazines.

2. I wake up with lots of energy most mornings.

3. I am startled by loud noises.

6. Projective Personality Tests

Psychoanalytic personality theorists have developed several assessment measures known as projective

tests. They include a variety of methods in which ambiguous stimuli, such as pictures of people, or things

are presented to a person who is asked to describe what he or she sees. The theory here is that people

`project' their own personality, their needs, their wishes, their desires and their unconscious fears on other

people and things such as ink blots, pictures, sometimes vague and sometimes structure. Projective tests are

based on psychoanalytic theory. They have been and they still remain, controversial. Some of the most

widely used projective tests are Rorschach Ink Blot Test, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), House

Tree Person (HTP) and the Rotter's Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB).

In projective tests, the person is presented with a series of ambiguous stimuli. The known projective test,

introduced in 1921 by Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, is based on the use of inkblots. Projective

techniques such as the Rorschach test were originally based on psychodynamic assumptions about the

nature of personality and psychopathology and impulses of which the person is largely unaware.

More recent Considerable emphasis was placed on the importance of unconscious motivations --conflicts

approaches to the use of projective tests view the person's descriptions of the cards as a sample of his or

her perceptual and cognitive styles. This test consists of ten standardized ink blot cards. That serves as

ambiguous stimuli. The examiner presents the inkblot cards one by one to the person being examined, who

responds by telling what he or she sees. The therapists may encourage the subject to give more detailed

answers and you may get different responses on the same inkblot. Exner's system of administering and

scoring the Rorschach inkblot test specifies how the card should be presented, what should the examiner

say and how the responses should be recorded.

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) consists of a series of drawings that depict human figures in

various ambiguous situations. The person is asked to describe the identities of the people in the cards and to

make up a story about what is happening. Morgan and Murray at the Harvard Psychological Clinic

developed the TAT. It consists of 31 cards, 30 with pictures on them and one blank card. The picture card

is shown to the subject and the therapist asks the subject to tell a dramatic story about the picture. The

instructions of the test begin `this is a test of imagination, one form of intelligence. Let your imaginations

have its way as in a fairy story and tell what the people in the picture card are doing.' The story should have

a title, a beginning, a middle part and an end. The basic assumption is that most of the subjects will reveal

their unconscious mental processes, their needs, desires on the characters of their stories about the pictures.

Their have been several variations of the TAT for different groups e.g. CAT- Children Apperception Test

and SAT A Senior Apperception Technique.

Rotter's Incomplete Sentence Blank Test (RISB)

This test consists of a series unfinished sentences that people are asked to complete, usually it is considered

a good spring board to explore and pinpoint areas of an individual's life that are problematic or conflicting.

The sentences are usually, I wish _____. My father is ______. Girls are _____. Home is a place ________.

This test explores an individual's social, familial and general attitudes towards life. This test has 40 items

which are in form of incomplete sentences. This test has qualitative and quantitative scoring procedures.

House Tree and Person (HTP)

Personality Psychology PSY 405

This is a test which tells us about the evaluations of the drawings based on the quality and shape of the

drawing, solidity of a pencil line, location of the drawing on the paper, the size of the figure, features of the

figures, use of the background and comments made by the respondent during the drawing task. The house

reflects individual's interpersonal relationships, the tree reflects ego development and functioning and the

Person reflects the individual self perception and perception of the other gender.

Advantages of Projective Tests: Some people may feel more comfortable talking in an unstructured

situation than they would if they were required to participate in a structured interview or to complete the

lengthy MMPI. Projective tests can provide an interesting source of information regarding the person's

unique view of the world, and they can be a useful supplement to information obtained with other

assessment tools. To whatever extent a person's relationships with other people are governed by

unconscious cognitive and emotional events, projective tests may provide information that cannot be

obtained through direct interviewing methods or observational procedures.

Limitations of Projective Tests: Lack of standardization in administration and scoring is a serious

problem. Little information is available on which to base comparisons to normal adults or children. Some

projective procedures, such as the Rorschach, can be very time-consuming. The reliability of scoring and

interpretation tends to be low. Many self-report inventories, rating scales, and behavioral coding systems

have been designed for the assessment of marital relationships and family systems. One popular self-report

inventory is the Family Environment Scale (FES), which is composed of 90 truefalse items and was

designed to measure the social characteristics of families.

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