Three Personality Assessments

Overview and Analysis of Three Personality Assessments

Defining and assessing an individual’s personality is a difficult task. According to Cohen, Swerdlik, and Struman (2013) personality is “an individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits that is relatively stable over time.” An individual’s personality contains several components including: attitudes, values, interests, acculturation, and several other factors. A personality test may be recommended for a wide range of reason from assessing competency to determining if an individual has the necessary attributes for a job. The purpose of this paper is to describe the construct, validity, and reliability of three unique personality assessments: the Eyesnck Personality Questionnaire-Revised,

Each consist of a series of yes or no questions correlated with either the N, E, L, or P scale. The junior form is barely discussed in the manual, which leads clinicians to believe its utility is limited. The manual states the junior test may be administered to ages 7 to 15. However, statistics show the questionnaire is only effective from ages 11 to 15 (Stricker, 2000). Those who have reviewed the junior EPQ-R believe this form is only used in research settings due to the lack of validity statistics provided in the manual (Tellegen, 2000).

The adult version of the EPQ-R contains 90 yes or no questions and takes approximately 15 minutes to administer (Block, 2000). The N scale contains 23 items, 19 of which are taken straight from the last version of the test, the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). The E scale consists of 17 questions from the EPI with the addition of 4 new questions. The L scale contains 21 items, none of which are new, and the P scale contains 25 new items (Block, 2000). A key is provided in the manual to allow administrators to hand score the test, or a computer scoring option is

The purpose of the test was unclear, some believed an individual’s answers represented internal schemas (Cohen et al., 2013). Others believed the individual’s perception reflected how they viewed their external world. Due to the lack of manual, and subjectivity, many individuals attempted to establish ways to code and score the Rorschach. The Comprehensive System developed by John E. Exner in 1974 was the first interpretation used frequently amongst clinicians (Cohen et al.,