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Personality Assessments 10 Best Inventories, Tests, & Methods
Personality Assessments 10 Best Inventories, Tests, & Methods
Personality Assessments 10 Best Inventories, Tests, & Methods
If you respond with a resounding yes, we understand the challenges you face.
As more and more organizations diversify their talent, a new challenge emerges of
how to get the best out of employees and teams of all personality configurations.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Strengths
Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help your clients or
employees realize their unique potential and create a life that feels energizing and
authentic.
This Article Contains
• What Are Personality Assessments in Psychology?
• 4 Methods and Types of Personality Assessments
• 7 Evidence-Based Inventories, Scales, and Tests
• Helpful Tools & Questions
• Fascinating Books About Personality Assessments
• Resources From PositivePsychology.com
• A Take-Home Message
• References
However, for this article, we can think of personality as the totality of one’s
behavioral patterns and subjective experiences (Kernberg, 2016).
All individuals have a constellation of traits and experiences that make them unique
yet simultaneously suggest that there are some generalizable or distinct qualities
inherent in all humans.
This is where measuring and assessing personality comes into play. Like most
psychological concepts, researchers want to show that theoretical knowledge can
be useful for working life and brought to bear in the real world.
1. Self-report assessments
Self-reports are one of the most widely used formats for psychometric testing.
They are as they sound: reports or questionnaires that a client or employee
completes themselves (and often scores themselves).
Self-report measures can come in many formats. The most common are Likert
scales where individuals are asked to rate numerically (from 1 to 7 for example) the
extent to which they feel that each question describes their thoughts, feelings, or
behaviors.
These types of assessments are popular because they are easy to distribute and
complete, they are often cost effective, and they can provide helpful insights into
behavior.
However, if you are a professional working with clients in any capacity, it is advised
to first try out any self-report measure before suggesting them to clients. In this
way, you can gauge for yourself the usefulness and validity of the measure.
2. Behavioral observation
While this method is more resource heavy in terms of time and requires an
observer (preferably one who is experienced and qualified in observing and coding
the behavior), it can be useful as a complementary method employed alongside
self-reports because it can provide an external corroboration of behavior.
3. Interviews
4. Projective tests
These types of tests are unusual in that they present individuals with an abstract or
vague object, task, or activity and require them to describe what they see. The idea
here is that the unfiltered interpretation can provide insight into the person’s
psychology and way of thinking.
Below, we highlight a few commonly used inventories and tests for such career
assessments.
The Hogan personality inventory (Hogan & Hogan, 2002) is a self-report personality
assessment created by Robert Hogan and Joyce Hogan in the late 1970s.
It was originally based on the California Personality Inventory (Gough, 1975) and
also draws upon the five-factor model of personality. The five-factor model of
personality suggests there are five key dimensions of personality: openness to
experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
(Digman, 1990).
The Hogan assessment comprises 206 items across seven different scales that
measure and predict social behavior and social outcomes rather than traits or
qualities, as do other popular personality measures.
• Adjustment
• Ambition
• Sociability
• Interpersonal sensitivity
• Prudence
• Inquisitiveness
• Learning approach
The HPI’s primary use is within organizations to help with recruitment and
the development of leaders. It is a robust scale with over 40 years of evidence to
support it, and the scale itself takes roughly 15–20 minutes to complete (Hogan
Assessments, n.d.).
2. DISC test
The DISC test of personality developed by Merenda and Clarke (1965) is a very
popular personality self-assessment used primarily within the corporate world. It is
based on the emotional and behavioral DISC theory (Marston, 1928), which
measures individuals on four dimensions of behavior:
• Dominance
• Inducement
• Submission
• Compliance
Unlike the DISC test, the CliftonStrengths™ assessment, employed by Gallup and
based on the work of Marcus Buckingham and Don Clifton (2001), is a questionnaire
designed specifically to help individuals identify strengths in the workplace and
learn how to use them.
The assessment is a self-report Likert scale comprising 177 questions and takes
roughly 30 minutes to complete. Once scored, the assessment provides individuals
with 34 strength themes organized into four key domains:
• Strategic thinking
• Executing
• Influencing
• Relationship building
The scale has a solid theoretical and empirical grounding, making it a popular
workplace assessment around the world.
4. NEO-PI-R
The NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 2008) is a highly popular self-report personality
assessment based on Allport and Odbert’s (1936) trait theory of personality.
With good reliability, this scale has amassed a large evidence base, making it an
appealing inventory for many. The NEO-PI-R assesses an individual’s strengths,
talents, and weaknesses and is often used by employers to identify suitable
candidates for job openings.
The scale itself comprises 240 questions that describe different behaviors and takes
roughly 30–40 minutes to complete. Interestingly, this inventory can be
administered as a self-report or, alternatively, as an observational report, making it
a favored assessment among professionals.
The scale results from successive revisions and improvements of earlier scales: the
Maudsley Personality Inventory (Eysenck 1959) and Eysenck Personality Inventory
(Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964).
The aim of the EPQ is to measure the three dimensions of personality as espoused
by Eysenck’s psychoticism–extraversion–neuroticism theory of personality The
scale itself uses a Likert format and was revised and shortened in 1992 to include 48
items (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1992).
This is a generally useful scale; however, some researchers have found that there
are reliability issues with the psychoticism subscale, likely because this was a later
addition to the scale.
The MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) is one of the most widely used personality
inventories in the world and uses a true/false format of questioning.
It was initially designed to assess mental health problems in clinical settings during
the 1940s and uses 10 clinical subscales to assess different psychological conditions.
The inventory was revised in the 1980s, resulting in the MMPI-2, which comprised
567 questions, and again in 2020, resulting in the MMPI-3, which comprises a
streamlined 338 questions.
While the revised MMPI-3 takes a lengthy 35–50 minutes to complete, it remains
popular to this day, particularly in clinical settings, and enables the accurate
capture of aspects of psychopathy and mental health disturbance. The test has
good reliability but must be administered by a professional.
The 16PF (Cattell et al., 1970) is another rating scale inventory used primarily in
clinical settings to identify psychiatric disorders by measuring “normal” personality
traits.
Cattell identified 16 primary personality traits, with five secondary or global traits
underneath that map onto the big five factors of personality.
These include such traits as warmth, reasoning, and emotional stability, to name a
few. The most recent version of the questionnaire (the fifth edition) comprises 185
multiple-choice questions that ask about routine behaviors on a 10-point scale and
takes roughly 35–50 minutes to complete.
The scale is easy to administer and well validated but must be administered by a
professional.
We share two informative videos on this topic and then move on to a short
collection of questions that can be used for career development.
Many of us have heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers & McCaulley,
1985), and for good reason. It is one of the most popular and widely used
personality assessments out there.
A mother and daughter team developed the MBTI in the 1940s during the Second
World War. The MBTI comprises 93 questions that aim to measure an individual on
four different dimensions of personality:
• Introversion/extraversion
• Sensing/intuition
• Thinking/feeling
• Judging/perceiving
For more information on the MBTI, you might enjoy the below videos:
WHY THE MYERS-BRIGGS TEST IS TOTALLY MEANINGLESS - VOX
1. Tell me about what inspires you. What gets you out of bed in the morning?
2. Tell me about your vision for your career/life.
3. What aspects of your role do you love? What aspects do you struggle with?
4. Tell me about a time where you used your strengths to achieve a positive
outcome.
5. Are there any healthy habits you want to build into your work life?
6. Describe your perfect working day. What would it look like?
7. Tell me about your fears.
8. What do you value most about your job?
9. What goals are you currently working toward?
10. How would your work colleagues describe you?
These books were chosen because they give an excellent overview of what
personality is and how it can be measured. They also illuminate some issues with
personality assessments. They provide a good grounding for any professional
looking to implement personality assessments in the workplace.
1. Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfil Your Potential – Carol Dweck
The main thesis of the book is to explore the idea that people can have either
a fixed or growth mindset (i.e., beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world
around us). Adopting a growth mindset can be a critical determinant of outcomes
such as performance and academic success.
2. The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of
Personality Testing – Merve Emre
If you are interested in the dark side of psychology assessments, this is the book for
you.
This book explores how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was developed and
discusses the questionable validity of the scale despite its widespread popularity in
the corporate world.
The book focuses most on extraversion and introversion as the two key types of
personality and also discusses the limitations of categorizing individuals into
“types” of personality.
For those interested in the science of personality and who prefer a slightly heavier,
academic read, this book is for you.
While strengths finding is a distinct and popular topic within positive psychology,
we can draw parallels between strengths research and some conceptualizations of
personality.
Recommended Reading
For more information on personality psychology and personality assessments,
check out the following related articles.
17 Career exercises
Designed to help people use their personality and strengths at work, this collection
of 17 work and career coaching exercises is grounded in scientific evidence. The
exercises help individuals and clients identify areas for career growth and
development. Some of these exercises include:
• Achievement Story
Chart your successes at work, take time to reflect on your achievements, and
identify how to use your strengths for growth.
• Job Analysis Through a Strengths Lens
Identify your strengths and opportunities to use them when encountering
challenges at work.
• Job Satisfaction Wheel
Complete the job satisfaction wheel, which measures your current levels of
happiness at work across seven different dimensions.
• What Work Means to You
Identify how meaningful your work is to you by assessing your motivational
orientation toward work (i.e., whether it is something you are called to and
that aligns with your sense of self).
A Take-Home Message
When managing people, it is always helpful to have insight into why they behave
the way they do. The same applies to assisting someone on their career path.
Having an understanding of the qualities that influence behavioral responses can
improve relationships, parenting, how people work, and even goal setting.
1. When using self-reports, take the scores with a pinch of salt, particularly as
we all operate with unconscious biases that can skew results.
2. Remain open minded about our personality traits; if we are resigned to the
idea that they are inherited at birth, fixed, and unchanging, we are unlikely to
gain any real discernment into our own evolving identity.
3. Labels can oftentimes be limiting. Trying to condense the myriad aspects of
an individual into a neat “personality” category could backfire.
In the right hands, validated personality assessments are valuable tools for guiding
clients on the right career path, ensuring a good job fit and building strong teams.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three
Strengths Exercises for free.
REFERENCES