Assessment and Research

Methods in Personality
 The RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND
RESEARCH:
• In the ideal of science, theory and research are
symbiotic-
theory predicts, research checks on that prediction.
If facts confirm theory, theory stays the same, if not,
modifications to theory are made, then tested
again…
However, this is not always the case. What happens
is that despite facts, the fundamentals of theory
rarely change, so they flourish and then they die,
replaced by another theory.
• Also there are 2 main pathways:

1 – EMPIRICAL APPROACH: research dominates

theory. (e.g. Trait theory)

2 – THEORETICAL APPROACH: theory dominates

research. EXPLANATION PRECEDES DESCRIPTION –
research is not really testing the theory as much as
it illustrates the theory. (e.g. Psychoanalytic theory)
 METHODS IN PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY
DATA GATHERING:

 Sources of data:

• (S-Data) SELF-REPORT:
– Unstructured (Open ended - interviews, fill in the blanks of 20 "I am..." statements)
– structured (questionnaires MMPI, NEO-PI - T/F or likert Scales (1-5))
– EXPERIENCE SAMPLING: using mechanical recording device - beeper goes off - report where you are,
what you are doing, who are you with..

• (O-Data) OBSERVER REPORT:

– friends, family - Based on knowing the person intimately - can use multiple observers - inter-rater
reliability
– Based on observation - naturalistic (school, home etc.) or artificial observation (lab) (behavioral)

• (T-Data) TEST DATA: Standardized/structured testing situation (Labs)

– BIOLOGICAL MEASURES: Hormones, physiological data (fMRI)
– PROJECTIVE TESTS: subjects respond, another trained interprets

• (L-Data) LIFE-OUTCOME DATA:

– Events of one’s life, outcomes (divorces..)
• SUBJECTIVE: those measures in which an
interpretation is part of the measure
• OBJECTIVE: no interpretation
• CASE STUDY: data collected over time by a clinician

• DOCUMENT ANALYSIS: psychobiography, dream diaries

• EXPERIMENTATION: cause and effect

• Any method of research has inherent strengths and

weaknesses and is better suited for some purposes than
others. A researcher chooses a method according to the
perspective of the personality paradigm they use.
• OPERATIONALIZATION: Going from intelligence to IQ score.
Inherently not the same thing. Absolutely necessary for science.
Yet we are constricted by how we measure something. If you don’t
ask the right questions… Also there are major issues in how the
subject responds to any questions, one needs to think about the
pressures, conscious and unconscious they respond to.
 
• Example: Milgram’s study – he operationalized obedience as the
magnitude of the shocks administered. Now if you think about it,
shocks could also be a measure someone’s aggression or a
measure of trust in the investigator as the all-knowing person.
• RELIABILITY: is the degree to which measures repeatedly give
the same answer.

• GENERALIZATION: is the degree to which different

investigations give the same conclusion about a phenomenon.
Requires big numbers, the more diverse the groups (age,
ethnicity, social class) it has been tested on, the more
generalizable. If the only subject pool is PSY101 students….

• STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE: results are unlikely to have

occurred by chance alone 5%.
• CORRELATIONAL DESIGN: All of personality research really is
correlational. You study what people bring with them in their
personality!! You can’t control or randomly assign personality
characteristics!!

• EXAMPLE: What researchers do is examine the relationship

between A and B, lets call them A=Number of friends someone
has and B= their measure of outgoingness. So, you operationalize
outgoingness, since asking someone to report how many friends
they have is straightforward. Let’s say you use a measure that
asks questions around how social and outgoing someone is. You
make hypotheses: In this experiment you might hypothesize that
number of friends someone has will vary according to the degree
of outgoing nature they have. Higher levels of outgoingness,
more friends and lower levels with less friends.
• You test this hypothesis and get some results.
What you are doing is you are asking the
question whether these two things go
together – it is a CORRELATION. You are not
saying anything about CAUSATION – you are
not saying outgoingness causes one to have
more friends. You can’t examine causation
from such a study.
 Now, let’s look at a few important aspects in this study. First
off, look at what the variables were: outgoingness and number
of friends. Now it makes intuitive sense that these two
variables may be strongly related to each other.
• 1 - But, what if the relationship between these variables is not
so straight forward. It could be that there are other factors
that influence both someone’s level of outgoingness and
number of friends some has, like a third or forth variables.
• 2 - Also what if the meaning of closeness and the depth of
friendships differs for people with different degrees of
outgoingness or independent of it.
• 3 - Also, you are also stuck with how you have
operationalized what it means to be outgoing, people may
read your test items and get something quite different from it.
• 4 - Or your test may be asking for general attitudes,
where people make many specific reactions to intimate
relationships such as friends, many conditions apply…
• 5 – well, the subject may not be perfect in knowing
how they are in terms of sociability
• 6 – one person’s friend is another’s acquaintance.
• 7 – subjects may think that there is a right answer and
they want to give that, may have ideas of how others
would respond to this question so may want to give an
answer that reflects that more than the reality.
• EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: to answer questions of causality. You look
at the variable you are interested in understanding as cause by
controlling the levels of the variable (independent variable)
(cause) and analyzing the differing effects it creates on the
dependent variable.

• MANIPULATE the INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

• EXPERIMENTAL CONTROL 1st defining aspect – keeping other

variables constant when varying independent variable.

• RANDOM ASSIGNMENT to counter the effects of individual

differences= 2nd most defining aspect
 My study..
• Individual differences on Negative Mood
Regulation Expectancies (low, Mid, High)
• Experimental trauma writing vs. Control group
– EXP (Low) vs. CON (Low)
– EXP (Mid) vs. CON (Mid)
– EXP (High) vs. CON (High)
• 1 month later - level of depression changed
according to exp. vs. control and NMR levels
(Interaction)
18

16

14

12
Düşük NMR Deney
10 Düşük NMR Kontrol
Orta NMR Deney
8 Orta NMR Kontrol
Yüksek NMR Deney
6 Yüksek NMR Kontrol

0
Pre BDI Post BDI

Low NMR EXP 13,8 13,9

Low NMR CON 14,65 16,15
Mid NMR EXP 12,25 12,6
Mid NMR CON 9,28 13,16
High NMR EXP 7,4 9,6
High NMR CON 12 10,6
• RELIABILITY refers to a measure's ability to produce
consistent results. A highly reliable measure yields an
accurate assessment of a variable despite the presence of
random factors that may influence results (Anastasi, 1988),
such as the day the subject took the test, whether the subject
had a good night's sleep, or who is coding it.
• need to make sure that if you get a "7" it really means a 7; is a
problem if blurry, so that different people see it different
ways, and if yields different scores depending on when you
happen to step onto it
• Test-retest reliability assesses the temporal stability of a test,
that is, its tendency to yield relatively similar scores for the
same individual over time.
• Internal consistency: several ways of asking the same
question yield similar results. For example, suppose a
researcher asked two questions to try to assess self-esteem:
"Do you like yourself?" and "Do you think you are a good
person?" SPLIT HALF, ALTERNATE TESTS
• Inter-rater reliability: 2 of more people using
the same measure to describe a person
arriving at similar findings.
• VALIDITY: the ability of that measure to assess the
variable it is supposed to measure; [construct validity
refers to how well the test measures a theoretical
construct]
• Validation research means demonstrating that a
measure consistently relates to some objective criterion
or to other measures that have themselves already
been shown to be valid; can show criterion validity, that
is, that it predicts some criterion, such as corr of
neuroticism and other people's ratings of it; or that
groups differ as should--e.g., measure of psychopathy
comparing prisoners and ministers (perhaps this isn't
such a good study); covergent and discriminant validity
• CONSTRUCT VALIDITY: The accuracy with which a
measure reflects the underlying concept – MOST
IMPORTANT KIND OF VALIDITY.

• A - CRITERION/PREDICTIVE VALIDITY: The degree to

which the measure correlates with a separate criterion
of the same concept. MOST IMPORTANT INDICATOR OF
CONSTRUCT VALIDITY

• B - CONVERGENT VALIDITY: Shows that measure

relates to characteristics that are similar to but not the
same as what is supposed to measure.
• C - DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY: That it doesn’t
measure qualities it is not intended to measure.
Influential about third variable – if the findings
show that the dimension you’re interested in is
unrelated to another variable, then that
variable can’t be invoked as an alternative for
the effect of the first one.

• D - FACE VALIDITY: The measure appears/looks

to measure what it’s supposed to measure.
 RESPONSE SETS: BIAS
• AQUIESCENCE: tendency to say yes –
counteract items in how they are written
• SOCIAL DESIRABILITY – give social desirability
test and then use correction or phrase in such
a way that it is not so bad to answer in less
'social desirable' ways..
 DEVELOPMENT OF TESTS:

• Theoretical or Empirical approach

• Most tests have a theoretical approach
• Empirical approach: Relies on data rather than
theory to decide what items should be in a
test.
• Criterion keying approach: items that
distinguish one group from another is kept.
 Ethics
• Informed Consent
• Risks and Benefits
• Deception
• Privacy, Confidentiality, and Anonymity
• Special Groups
 Informed Consent
• A description of the study should be provided
in advance, including mention of: the purpose
of the research; expected benefits of the
research; methods (tasks to be performed);
any effects, risks or inconveniences of the
procedure; rights of the participant; and any
possible alternative procedures.
 Risks and Benefits
• Protection from harm
• The onus is on the researcher to avoid or
minimize risks to the subjects, both in carrying
out the research and in publication of the
results.
 Deception
• Deception is a situation in which subjects have
essential information withheld and/or are
intentionally misled about procedures and
purposes.
• A thorough debriefing is particularly
important in studies involving deception.
Privacy, Confidentiality and Anonymity

• Right to privacy
• Personal information given by the subject will
be confidential. Wherever possible, the
researcher will take steps to ensure the
anonymity of the subjects.