Principles of Application and Interpretation of the Results of Personality Tests - Essay Example

? Personality Testing Personality Testing This refers to the use of already developed tools to reveal the character traits or the psychological characteristics of an individual (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). These tools are widely used in the process of determining the suitable personnel during the recruitment of employees in many organizations. Personality tests are used in other areas such as individual and relationship counseling, as well as career planning and the development of the already existing employees in an organization (House & Johnson, 2002). Personality testing includes the presentation of some tests or questions to individuals, who then responds to such questions based on a rated scale, depending on how such items of the tests reflects their personal behavior. Most of these test items are formulated in form of questionnaires, where the individuals’ rates the degree to which they agree or disagree with such statements as presented. The answers given are then analyzed, and used to assess the personality and psychological makeup of the individuals. These traits are then used to determine how an individual is best placed to undertake certain duties and responsibilities, and how suitable they are at this. The most important reason as to why personality tests are administered is to determine reliability and validity (Payne, 1989). Reliability in this case is used to refer to the consistency of the elements being assessed, while validity refers to the suitability of the tests to measure the traits that they were meant to measure, through the administration of the tests. Thus, validity requires that both evidence and theory support the interpretation of the scores in such tests administered (Gorsuch, 1983). Factor analysis plays a great role in the construction of personality tests. Since there are many words and phrases that can be used to refer to the character traits of an individual, it becomes difficult for all of them to be applied in analyzing the characters of an individual (House & Johnson, 2002). Therefore, factor analyzing helps to classify all this words and phrases into cluster, which simplifies the information under each of these clusters. Thus, factor analysis is applied in personality tests constructions to put together all those indicators than can point to a single character trait in an individual. Accuracy in these pointers is a necessary consideration in constructing such tests, through putting the variables or indicators that point to a single trait in a cluster. This is because, lack of accuracy is grouping such traits may eventually give character traits of individuals that are not valid and accurate (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). The greatest role played by factor analysis in constructing such tests is ensuring that bulk information is simplified into a number of variables, which can conveniently indicate the character traits of such individuals. There is a disadvantage associated with factor analysis, as applied in constructing personality tests. Through the process of reducing bulk information and clustering many variables and indicators into a few variables, then many details are lost in the process (Gorsuch, 1983). This would mean that the accuracy of such indicators of personality traits eventually developed might not be as accurate as they could be, if all the details were put into consideration. In this case, the fewer the number of indicators and variables are formed from a set of bulk information, the easier it is to administer the test, but the more the accuracy of the test is lost (House & Johnson, 2002). Factor analysis plays a very important role in the construction of the personality tests. Factor analysis creates different perspectives through which the character traits of an individual can be understood, by reducing the bulk information and details into a small number of traits that are easily observable in a person (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). Factor analysis creates a foundation through which the most important and relevant character traits to a particular task or job assignment are indentified. This is because, through clustering different factors and behavioral details into just a few behavioral indicators, that are easily observable, the most vital behavioral traits, necessary for a particular undertaking are easily sorted out. This serves to simplify the whole recruitment exercise, in that the recruiters will just be looking out for few indicators, which in them have various other desired factors. Another important role played by factor analysis is that it enhances the process of sifting the most important and universally desired personal traits for use in personality testing. Factor analysis allows the constructor of personality tests to take on the most important behavioral characters as the basis for determining the suitability of individual personal traits and discards those factors, which appears less important (House & Johnson, 2002). As more research continues to be undertaken in this field, factor analysis allows the replacement of the older factors with the newly discovered ones, which are considered more relevant. Reliability is an important aspect of personality testing. However, determining the reliability of personality tests is an issue that has been contentious, in that some individuals assessed to possess a given behavioral trait during the test could portray a completely different trait later on, when they join the organization. Reliability requires that individuals are consistent in their behaviors, as they are judged during the time the test is undertaken and later, when the individual is required to put the behavioral trait into practice (Gorsuch, 1983). Correlation is the estimate most applicable in determining the reliability of personal traits, under personality tests. Correlation estimates are used to indicate the strength of the relationship between the behaviors of individuals, as measured differently. Thus, if there is a strong positive correlation, then the strength of the relationship of the behavioral traits of such individuals is high, meaning that they consistently portray the same behavioral trait (House & Johnson, 2002). To measure the strength of such behavioral relationships, Test-retest method is applied in personality tests, where the personal traits of the same individual are assessed at different points. If there is a strong positive relationship between the behaviors they portray at these two different points, then the behavioral traits portrayed by the individual become reliable. If on the contrary there is no relationship between the traits portrayed, through having a strong negative or zero correlation, then the behavioral trait of the individual may not be reliable (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). Therefore, the reliability of a personality test is very crucial, in that it helps the recruiters or the counselors to determine accurately the character traits of individuals. A personality test that has no reliability is not worth having or applying. Validity of a personality test on the other hand can be measured through various ways. The validity of a personality test requires that the actual objectives for which the test was prepared to measure is achieved. To the extent that the goals are not met by the personality test, as they were set, then, there is no validity in the personality tests (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). The first measure of the validity of a personality test is the content validity measure, where the items on the test are assessed to see how well they test the intentions of the personality test. Criterion-related validity is another measure of the validity of a personality test, where it assesses how better a test predicts job performance by the individual whose personal traits are measured by the test (House & Johnson, 2002). This can be assessed by giving the employees of an organization a personality test to undertake while at the same time assessing how well they have been performing in their jobs, through performance appraisal. If the personality test and the job performance of the individuals indicate a similarity, then the validity of the personality test is good. If on the contrary the job performance does not match the aspects of personality tests evaluated, then, there lacks validity in the personality test (Gorsuch, 1983). The relationship of convergent and discriminant validity to these tests is the fact that responses given by the respondents to the tests may vary systematically. This variation can be classified into trait-related or method-related components of the test (House & Johnson, 2002). The convergent components give different character traits of the respondents from the discriminant components. However, both categories of the component can be applied to determine the validity of the personality tests applied. The personality tests results can be applied to project whether a potential employee or those ones who are already continuing in the organization will perform as desired in their jobs. However, the degree of accuracy of such projections is highly dependent on the reliability and validity of the personality tests undertaken to the individuals. If the tests undertaken to such individuals are valid and reliable, they will accurately indicate the character traits of the individuals, which will then be matched with the behavioral requirements of such jobs in an organization (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). When the character traits matches perfectly with the behavioral requirement of a certain job, then there is a higher chance that the job performance will be good, as opposed to giving the job to an individual who does not have the required traits for such a job. However, worth noting is the fact that there are other factors that determines job performance, such as the level of employee motivation, which can affect the way they perform in the job, regardless of their character traits (Payne, 1989). Works cited Anastasi, A., & Urbina, S. (1997). Psychological testing (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Gorsuch, R. L. (1983). Factor analysis (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. House, J. D., & Johnson, J. J. (2002). Predictive validity of the Graduate Record Examination advanced psychology tests for grade performance in graduate psychology courses. College Student Journal, 36(1), 32-37. Payne, R. W. (1989). Reliability theory and clinical psychology. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45(2), 351-353. Read More