Discovering Your Personality Score

Generally, qualities of personality are estimated by observing the individual directly, by asking others about him or by questioning him as to what he would do in certain typical situations. But professionally, there are time-tested procedures for measuring personality which are similar to those practiced for measuring ability. This is done under uniform and controlled conditions.

There are some major purposes, settings and functions of personality measurement. Objective tests, inventories and projective techniques are used for diagnosis, counseling, personnel selection and research.

Diagnosis is normally carried out in a mental-hygiene clinic or mental hospital, where the person is classified into clinical type or treatment group. Counseling usually is carried out in a clinic, hospital, school or counseling center to obtain personality assessment before, during and or after counseling sessions. Personnel selection for job classification is usually carried out in an industrial, government or some special training setting. Personality research uses all the above settings to assess the results of experimental observations and ascertain the adequacy of the measurement.

By means of direct observation, the assessors can watch the subject's reaction to every day situations and his characteristic way of responding to specific people. Ratings are made on these observations. In the assessment of personality, three kinds of interviews have been conventionally used. The personnel interview brings out both factual information and data about the content of the subject's thinking. In a medical setting, the assessor uses the diagnostic interview to get at the past history of the patient as it relates to his mental status. The outward manifestations of personality are obtained though the use of rating scales. Here, they may employ a checklist system using a number of favorable and unfavorable trait name that relate to the characteristic being tested.

A widely used method for measuring typical social reactions is the questionnaire, designed to ask exactly the same questions to all persons. The possible responses will be limited to a few alternative answers. A questionnaire usually consists of questions dealing with the traits that are to be measured. The score will be the number of significant answers.

Formal and informal interviews are widely used for assessing personality. Informal interviews are those in which, though the direction of conversation is not predetermined, they may be valuable in exploring possible avenues of information about a person. Formal interviews are more than an orally administered questionnaire consisting of the subject's responses to a fixed list of questions.

Personality inventories are designed to measure both overt and covert characteristics; in other words, the outer as well as the inner information on the candidate. Inventories at times provide more information about an individual than one gets through the use of questionnaires and interviews.

In projective test, the subjects are presented with many inkblots, one at a time, in the same order. They are then asked to tell what each inkblot resembles or what he sees. Based on his responses, the examiner arrives at proper interpretations.

These days, computers programmed to stimulate real life situations are used for measuring a person's personality. Computers are also used in diagnostic interviews. Computer has helped bring to the field of personality measurement, a systems approach for collecting data and making interpretations. The inputs collected include data from direct observation, interviews and tests that need to be analyzed, organized and integrated before the output in terms of diagnosis, description, decision or prediction is made.