Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Psychometrics is concerned with the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed. Examples of latent constructs include intelligence, introversion, mental disorders, and educational achievement. The levels of individuals on nonobservable latent variables are inferred through mathematical modeling based on what is observed from individuals' responses to items on tests and scales.
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self-report questionnaire that makes pseudoscientific claims to categorize individuals into 16 distinct "psychological types" or "personality types".
Psychological testing refers to the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered or scored by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought to reflect individual or group differences in the construct the test purports to measure. The science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.
The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. The Rorschach can be thought of as a psychometric examination of pareidolia, the active pattern of perceiving objects, shapes, or scenery as meaningful things to the observer's experience, the most common being faces or other patterns of forms that are not present at the time of the observation. In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized psychometric test of adult personality and psychopathology. A version for adolescents also exists, the MMPI-A, and was first published in 1992. Psychologists and other mental health professionals use various versions of the MMPI to help develop treatment plans, assist with differential diagnosis, help answer legal questions, screen job candidates during the personnel selection process, or as part of a therapeutic assessment procedure.
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective psychological test developed during the 1930s by Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at Harvard University. Proponents of the technique assert that subjects' responses, in the narratives they make up about ambiguous pictures of people, reveal their underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world. Historically, the test has been among the most widely researched, taught, and used of such techniques.
A personality test is a method of assessing human personality constructs. Most personality assessment instruments are in fact introspective self-report questionnaire measures or reports from life records (L-data) such as rating scales. Attempts to construct actual performance tests of personality have been very limited even though Raymond Cattell with his colleague Frank Warburton compiled a list of over 2000 separate objective tests that could be used in constructing objective personality tests. One exception, however, was the Objective-Analytic Test Battery, a performance test designed to quantitatively measure 10 factor-analytically discerned personality trait dimensions. A major problem with both L-data and Q-data methods is that because of item transparency, rating scales, and self-report questionnaires are highly susceptible to motivational and response distortion ranging from lack of adequate self-insight to downright dissimulation depending on the reason/motivation for the assessment being undertaken.
In psychology, a projective test is a personality test designed to let a person respond to ambiguous stimuli, presumably revealing hidden emotions and internal conflicts projected by the person into the test. This is sometimes contrasted with a so-called "objective test" / "self-report test", which adopt a "structured" approach as responses are analyzed according to a presumed universal standard, and are limited to the content of the test. The responses to projective tests are content analyzed for meaning rather than being based on presuppositions about meaning, as is the case with objective tests. Projective tests have their origins in psychoanalysis, which argues that humans have conscious and unconscious attitudes and motivations that are beyond or hidden from conscious awareness.
The Type A and Type B personality concept describes two contrasting personality types. In this hypothesis, personalities that are more competitive, highly organized, ambitious, impatient, highly aware of time management, or aggressive are labeled Type A, while more relaxed, "receptive", less "neurotic" and "frantic" personalities are labeled Type B.
The Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) is a short questionnaire developed in 1987 by Michael Liebowitz, a psychiatrist and researcher at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Its purpose is to assess the range of social interaction and performance situations feared by a patient in order to assist in the diagnosis of social anxiety disorder. It is commonly used to study outcomes in clinical trials and, more recently, to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral treatments. The scale features 24 items, which are divided into two subscales. 13 questions relate to performance anxiety and 11 concern social situations. The LSAS was originally conceptualized as a clinician-administered rating scale, but has since been validated as a self-report scale.
DISC assessments are behavioral self-assessment tools based on psychologist William Moulton Marston's DISC emotional and behavioral theory, first published in 1928. These assessments aim to improve job performance by categorizing individuals into four personality traits: dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance.
Meyer Friedman was an American cardiologist who developed, with colleague Ray H. Rosenman, the hypothesis that the "Type A" behavior of chronically angry and impatient people increases their risk of heart disease. Also a researcher, he worked until his death at 90 as director of a medical institute that bears his name.
The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram, is a pseudoscientific model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types.
The Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) is a measure of masculinity and femininity, and is used to research gender roles. It assesses how people identify themselves psychologically. Sandra Bem's goal of the BSRI was to examine psychological androgyny and provide empirical evidence to show the advantage of a shared masculine and feminine personality versus a sex-typed categorization. The test is formatted with 60 different personality traits which participants rate themselves based on a 7-point Likert scale. Traits are evenly dispersed, 20 masculine, 20 feminine, and 20 filler traits thought to be gender neutral. All traits in the BSRI are positively valued personality aspects. Numerous past studies have found that gender categorizations are correlated with many stereotypical gendered behaviors.
Sexuality can be inscribed in a multidimensional model comprising different aspects of human life: biology, reproduction, culture, entertainment, relationships and love.
The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) was developed in 1979 by Raskin and Hall, and since then, has become one of the most widely utilized personality measures for non-clinical levels of the trait narcissism. Since its initial development, the NPI has evolved from 220 items to the more commonly employed NPI-40 (1984) and NPI-16 (2006), as well as the novel NPI-1 inventory (2014). Derived from the DSM-III criteria for Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the NPI has been employed heavily by personality and social psychology researchers.
Individual psychological assessment (IPA) is a tool used by organizations to make decisions on employment. IPA allows employers to evaluate and maintain potential candidates for hiring, promotion, and development by using a series of job analysis instruments such as position analysis questionnaires (PAQ), occupational analysis inventory (OAI), and functional job analysis (FJA). These instruments allow the assessor to develop valid measures of intelligence, personality tests, and a range of other factors as means to determine selection and promotion decisions. Personality and cognitive ability are good predictors of performance. Emotional Intelligence helps individuals navigate through challenging organizational and interpersonal encounters. Since individual differences have a long history in explaining human behavior and the different ways in which individuals respond to similar events and circumstances, these factors allow the organization to determine if an applicant has the competence to effectively and successfully do the work that the job requires. These assessments are administered throughout organizations in different forms, but they share one common goal in the selection process, and that is the right candidate for the job.
The Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT) is a sentence completion test created by Jane Loevinger, which measures ego development along Loevinger's stages of ego development. The WUSCT is a projective test; a type of psychometric test designed to measure psychic phenomenon by capturing a subject's psychological projection and measuring it in a quantifiable manner. The test has been characterized as a good test for clinical use as it can measure across distinct psychopathologies and help in choosing treatment modalities; to this end, it is used by many clinical psychologists and psychiatrists.
The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) is a self-report scale that measures distress when meeting and talking with others that is widely used in clinical settings and among social anxiety researchers. The measure assesses social anxiety disorder, which is fear or anxiety about one or more social situations where the individual is subject to possible scrutiny.
The Comrey Personality Scales is a personality test developed by Andrew L. Comrey in 1970. The CPT measures eight main scales and two validity scales. The test is currently distributed by Educational and Industrial Testing Service. The test consists of 180 items rated on a seven-point scale.
