Personality Assessments

When reading the chapter this week, I kept thinking about the discussion we had two weeks ago about the validity of personality tests. Any instrument that is solely self-report will have some validity issues, primarily because there is only one measure that is dependent on an individual’s own opinion of his or her traits, which is open to interpretation and subject to error. As I mentioned in class, I think that an intelligent person familiar with assessment procedures and questions may be able to respond with what they deem as the “correct” answers in these sorts of assessments even though it may not necessarily reflect their typical behavior. Of course, many personality assessments (primarily inventories) do not have any “correct” answers, and instead, are used to identify the characteristic traits of a person’s personality. Validity would not be as much of an issue for these type of assessments. I also approach personality tests with some measure of hesitation because the concept of personality is so difficult to define and measure. As the text mentions, there are dozens of diverse definitions of this concept which appear in the literature, which has resulted in the development of thousands of personality assessments purported to measure various aspects of this concept. Fortunately, Drummond and Jones do adhere to one standard definition for the purposes of the text, defining personality as the “reasonably stable patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behavior that distinguish one person from another” (p. 248). I am comforted by this definition because it claims to measure consistency in personality traits, not a particular mood of a person at a given time, which is an entirely different measure. Despite my concerns with these assessments, I really enjoyed administering and interpreting the BarOn Emotion Quotient Inventory for this course. Because I administered the exam to my Theory II client, I had some familiarity with his characteristic behaviors and thought patterns and was pleased to find that the results of this assessment mirrored what I (and he and his parents) had expected from the exam. I also appreciated that the assessment included a positive impression measure which controlled for individuals who may have been trying to respond in such a way to create an overly positive image of themselves. This measure, in addition to the inconsistency index, helped to alleviate some of my concerns about personality assessments that I described above. Drummond, R., and Jones, K. Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals. (2010). 7th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.