Clinical Psychology

Disadvantages

The items of many inventories are often behavioral
in nature. That is, the questions or statements con-
cern behaviors that may (or may not) characterize
the respondent. Those interested in identifying
motives or personality may glean little understand-
ing through such items. For example, although two
individuals may endorse the same behavioral item
(“I have trouble getting to sleep”), they may do so
for entirely different reasons.
Some inventories contain a mixture of items
dealing with behaviors, cognitions (i.e., thoughts
and beliefs), and emotions (i.e., feelings). Yet inven-
tories often provide a single overall score, which may
reflect various combinations of these behaviors,

cognitions, and emotions. Therefore, two individuals

whoachievethesamescoremayactuallybequite

different, even in reference to the personality trait

or construct in question. Thus, the same score on a

measure may have several alternative interpretations.

Other difficulties involve the transparent mean-

ing of some inventories’questions, which can obvi-

ously facilitate faking on the part of some patients.

Some tests tend to depend heavily on the patient’s

self-knowledge. In addition, the forced-choice

approach prevents individuals from qualifying or

elaborating their responses so that some additional

information may be lost or distorted. In other

instances, the limited understanding or even the lim-

ited reading ability of some individuals may lead

them to misinterpret questions (a misinterpretation

not necessarily attributable to personality determi-

nants) or to answer questions in a random fashion.

Methods of Construction for Objective Tests

Now that we have some appreciation of the advan-

tages and limitations of objective tests, it is instruc-

tive to turn our attention to the various methods of

construction used in developing these tests. Over

the years, a variety of strategies for constructing

self-report inventories have been proposed (e.g.,

see Butcher, 2010).

Content Validation. The most straightforward

approach to measurement is for clinicians to decide

what it is they wish to assess and then to simply ask

the patient for that information. For example, the

Woodworth Personal Data Sheet used in World

War I was a kind of standardized psychiatric inter-

view. Content was determined by surveying the

psychiatric literature to identify the major manifes-

tations of“neuroses”and“psychoses.”Items were

then constructed that would tap those manifesta-

tions. Consequently, if the domain of neurosis or

psychosis (as defined by the psychiatric literature)

was adequately sampled, then the test could be

assumed to be valid. “Do you sleep well at

night?”“Do you get angry easily?”and“Are you

easily insulted?”were considered good items if they

Objective paper-and-pencil tests are economical, easy to
administer, and easy to score.

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PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT 221