What are testtaker's response styles?

Psychological testing and assessment (9th edition)
Cohen & Swerdlik (2018)
Chapter 11
Personality assessment: An overview

For laypeople: personality refers to components of an individual’s makeup that can elicit positive or negative reactions from others.

Personality and personality assessment

Personality

Dozens of different definitions of personality exist in the psychology literature.
Personality: an individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits that is relatively stable over time.

Personality assessment

Personality assessment: the measurement and evaluation of psychological traits, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humour, cognitive and behavioural styles, and/or related individual characteristics.

Traits, types and states

Personality traits

There is no consensus regarding the definition of trait.
This book views psychological traits as attributions made in an effort to identify threads of consistency in behavioural patterns.
Personality trait: any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another.
The context is important in applying trait terms to behaviour.

• A behaviour present in one context may be labelled with one trait term, but the same behaviour exhibited in another context with another trait term.

A measure of behaviour in a particular context may be obtained using varied tools of psychological assessment.
Exactly how a particular trait manifests itself is, at least to some extent, dependent on the situation.

Personality types

Personality type: a constellation of traits that is similar in pattern to one identified category of personality within a taxonomy of personalities.
Whereas traits are frequently discussed as if they were characteristics possessed by an individual, types are more clearly descriptions of people.
It is more far-reaching.

The personality typology that has attracted the most attention from researchers and practitioners is associated with scores on a test called the MMPI.
Data from the administration of these tests are frequently discussed in terms of the patterns of scores that emerge on the sub-tests.
This pattern is referred to as a profile.
Profile: a narrative description, graph, table or other representation of the extent to which a person has demonstrated certain targeted characteristics as a result of the administration or application of tools of assessement.
Personality profile: profile of which the typical the targeted characteristics are traits, states, or types.

Personality states

The word state has been used in at least two distinctly different ways in the personality assessment literature

• An inferred psychodynamic disposition designed to convey the dynamic quality of id, ego and superego in perpetual conflict
• The transitory exhibition of some personality trait.
  A relatively temporary predisposition.

Measuring personality states amounts, in essence, to a search for and an assessment of the strenght of traits that are relatively transitory or fairly situation specific.

Personality assessment: some basic questions

In the most general sense, basic research involving personality assessment helps to validate or invalidate theories of behaviour and to generate new hypotheses.

Who

Who is being assessed and who is doing the assessing?
Some methods of personality assessment rely on the assessee’s own self-report.
Other methods of personality assessment rely on informants other than the person being assessed to provide personality-related information.

The self as the primary referent

People typically undergo personality assessment so that they, as well as the assessor, can learn something about who they are.
In many instances, the assessment requires self-report.
Self-report methods are very commonly used to explore an assessee’s self-concept.
Self-concept: one’s attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and related thoughts about oneself.
Inferences about an assessee’s self-concept may be derived form many tools of assessment.
Self-concept measure: an instrument designed to yield information relevant to how an individual sees him- or herself with regard to selected psychological variables.
Data from such and instrument are usually interpreted in the context of how others may see themselves on the same or similar variables.

Some measures of self-concept are based on the notion that states and traits related to self-concept are to a large degree context-dependent.
Self-concept differentiation: the degree to which a person has different self-concepts in different roles.
People who are highly differentiated are likely to perceive themselves quite differently in various roles.

Assuming that assessees have reasonably accurate insight into their own thinking an behaviour and assuming that they are motivated to respond to test items honestly, self-report measures can be extremely valuable.
Unfortunately, some assessees may intentionally or unintentionally paint distorted pictures of themselves in self-report measures.
Some testtakers truly may be impaired with regard to their ability to respond accurately to self-report questions.

Another person as the referent

In some situations, the best available method for the assessment of personality, behaviour, or both involves reporting by a third party.

In general, there are many cautions to consider when one person undertakes to evaluate another.
These cautions are by no means limited to the area of personality assessment.

• Leniency error
• Generosity error
• Severity error
• Error of central tendency
• Halo effect

Many factors may contribute to bias in rater’s ratings.

• Raters may make biased judgments consciously or unconsciously, simply because it is in their own self-interest to do so.
• The rater may feel competitive with, physically attracted to, or physically repelled by the subject of the ratings.
• The rater may not have the proper background, experience, and trained eye needed for the particular task.

When another person is the referent, an important factor to consider with regard to ratings is the context of the evaluation.
Different raters may have different perspectives on the individual they are rating because of the context in which they typically view that person.

Regardless whether the self or another person is the subject of the study, one element any evaluation that must be kept in mind by the assessor is the cultural context.

The cultural background of assessees

Test developers and users have shown increased sensitivity to issues of cultural diversity.

What?

What is assessed when a personality assessment is conducted?

Primary content area sampled

Personality measures are tools used to gain insight into a wide array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours associated with all aspects of the human experience.

Many contemporary personality tests, especially tests that can be scored and interpreted by computer, are designed to measure not only some targeted trait or other personality variable but also some aspect of the testtaker’s response style.

Testtaker response styles

Response style: a tendency to respond to a test item or interview question in some characteristic manner regardless of the content of the item or question.

• Socially desirable responding
  Present oneself in a favourable light
• Acquiescent
  Agree with whatever is presented
• Nonacquiescence
  Disagree with whatever is presented
• Deviance
  Make unusual or uncommon responses
• Extreme
  Make extreme, as opposed to middle, ratings on a rating scale
• Gambling/cautiousness
  Guess- or not guess- when in doubt
• Overly positive
  Claim extreme virtue through self-presentation in a superlative manner

Impression management: a term used to describe the attempt to manipulate others’ impressions through the ‘selective exposure of some information coupled with suppression of (other) information’.
In the process of personality assessment, assessees might employ any number of impression management strategies for any number of reasons.
Testtakers who engage in impression management are exhibiting, in the broadest sense, a response style.

Some personality tests contain items designed to detect different types of response styles.
Because a response style can affect the validity of the outcome, one particular type of response style measure is the validity scale.
Validity scale: a subscale of a test designed to assist in judgments regarding how honestly the testtaker responded and whether observed responses were products of response style, carelessness, deliberate efforts to deceive, or unintentional misunderstanding.
Some test contain multiple validity scales.

Where

Where are personality assessments conducted?
Can be everywhere

How?

How are personality assessments structured and conducted?

Scope and theory

One dimension of the how of personality assessment concerns its scope.

• It may be very wide, seeking to take a kind of general inventory of an individual’s personality.
• There are also instruments much narrower in terms of what they support to measure.

To what extent is a personality test theory based or relatively atheoretical?
Instruments used in personality testing and assessment very in the extent to which they are based on a theory of personality.

Procedures and item formats

Personality may be assessed by many different methods.
The equipment required for assessment varies greatly, depending