Week 11: Personality Assessment

Personality assessment is a very fun and interesting area of testing. In doing personality assessments, an individual’s specific and unique qualities are measured or sorted. This includes information about energy, disposition, temperament, as well as how those qualities play out in exhibited behaviors. Typically, a counselor is measuring an aspect(s) of a client in order to assist with making decisions regarding what course of action to take or how to predict the individual’s behavior. While these are not as reliable as cognitive measurements, they are nevertheless important and useful.
 

Personality inventories are primarily useful in clinical settings, although this is not completely true. There are some used in the school setting that we will talk about. They are used mostly to measure psychopathology as well as to measure the changes that are occurring over a period of time. Some assessments measure psychopathology as a primary focus, and others concentrate on assessing positive personality traits.
 

This week, you will be doing multiple inventories, including some for children. It will be a fun and interesting week, and hopefully you will feel comfortable discussing, evaluating, and using some of the assessments we cover in class. So that it is not overwhelming, consider completing one assessment each night and writing up your paragraph of summarizing the assessment.

Session Objectives

By the end of this week, you will:

• Provide a general definition of personality
• Define the terms state, trait, and type as they relate to personality
• Explain the various approaches by which personaltiy instruments are constructed
• Describe the characteristics of structured personality inventories and provide examples of inventories that fall in this category
• Describe and provide examples of projective techniques and explain how they are distinct from structured personality inventories
• Describe personality inventories that assess positive aspects of personality
• Describe the potential problems and issues associated with feedback sessions with parents