Personality assessment involves measuring an individual's unique characteristics. It can be used to aid in clinical diagnosis, treatment planning, and determining strengths and weaknesses. The process involves clarifying the referral question, selecting appropriate tests, administering tests in a standardized way, interpreting results based on empirical data and clinical judgment, and reporting findings in a clear and readable manner while considering cultural context.

1. Personality Assessment

2. Defining Personality
• Personality can be defined as a complex array or combination of
behaviors, emotional patterns and cognitions that result from the
evolution of biological and environmental factors
• It is also defined as an organized set of characteristics possessed by
an individual
• It is a dynamic combination and organization of our thoughts,
emotions, behaviors and attitudes
• an individual’s unique constellation of psychological states and traits

3. Personality Assessment
• Personality assessment can be defined simply as the process of
measuring the personal characteristics of individuals
• It is also the process used for the identification of the differences in
the personalities of individuals
• According to the definition proposed by APA
• “Personality Assessment is a proficiency in professional psychology that
involves the administration, scoring, and interpretation of empirically
supported measures of personality traits and styles in order to: Refine clinical
diagnoses; Structure and inform psychological interventions and to bring
about a positive change in individuals with pathological or problematic
personality types

4. The Personality Assessment Process
• 1. Purpose of Personality Assessment
• 2. Preparing the Personality Assessments
• 3. Conducting Personality Assessments
• 4. Interpreting Personality Assessment Data
• 5. Reporting Personality Assessment Findings

5. 1. Purpose of Personality Assessment
• The purpose of such forms of assessment is
• In decision making in clinical, healthcare, forensic, educational and organizational settings
• To aid in differential diagnosis and treatment planning
• Identification of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and their adaptive capacities
• To help in formulating treatment goals and interventions
• Decision making about personality pathologies, insanity assessments and competency to
stand trial in forensic setting
• In educational settings, the results of personality assessments can identify the need to
provide counseling or special educational services for students with conduct or learning
problems.
• In organizational settings, personality assessment can prove useful in evaluating candidates
for employment or promotion, and test findings can help determine the fitness for-duty of
persons who have become psychologically impaired or who have behaved in ways that raised
concern about their potential for violence.

6. 2. Preparing for Personality Assessment
• In preparing to conduct a personality assessment, examiners should have
clearly in mind the referral questions that
are being asked and the kinds of conclusions and recommendations that
will be responsive to these questions.
• Clarity about referral questions guides examiners in collecting appropriate
assessment data and interpreting these data in a useful way.
• Adequate preparation for conducting a personality assessment thus
consists of clarifying the referral question and selecting a test battery, and
it must also include obtaining informed consent from the person who is to
be examined.

7. 2. Preparing for Personality Assessment
• Clarifying the Referral
• Referral questions should indicate for personality assessors what the most relevant
features of their test data are likely to be and what specific issues they should
address in reporting their findings.
• Vague referrals should be clarified prior to beginning an evaluation.
• A clinical referral for “differential diagnosis” needs to state the alternative diagnostic
possibilities being considered by the referring person (e.g., “bipolar disorder versus
borderline personality disorder”), in order for examiners to know which personality
test variables should receive particular attention.
• Similarly, a referral for “personality evaluation” needs to identify why the evaluation
is being requested (e.g., “to assist in treatment planning”), in order for examiners to
know what personality characteristics will be important to emphasize in their report.

8. 2. Preparing for Personality Assessment
• Selecting the test battery
• Adequate preparation for conducting a personality assessment includes
informed selection of assessment instruments
to include in the test battery.
• Depending on the referral question, it may be helpful to administer certain
one-dimensional checklists and relatively brief questionnaires including
• BDI II
• Child Behavior Checklist
• Eating Disorders Inventory 3
• Narcissistic Personality Inventory
• Neo FFI

9. 2. Preparing for Personality Assessment
• Differential Sensitivity to Personality State and Traits
• It is better to use self-report inventories and checklists as they use a more direct
approach to determining what people think, how they feel, how they spend their
time and what kind of symptoms they experience
• It means that they are well-suited in the identification of personality states, explicit
motives and other forms and types of characteristics
• Self-report inventories are especially helpful in determining the presence and
severity of specific psychological disorders.
• However, there is one weaknesses i.e. Because they are so direct in asking people to
describe themselves in specific terms, self-report measures may not shed much light
on personality traits and behavioral dispositions that people do not fully recognize in
themselves and are therefore unable to disclose. In simple words, they might not
identify personality problems in those individuals who do not have insights about
their problems

10. 2. Preparing for Personality Assessment
• Performance-based measures function quite differently in these respects.
• Because they are indirect and rarely ask
people specific questions about themselves, they seldom provide much
information about what people are thinking
and feeling at the moment or about what symptoms they might be
experiencing.
• However, performance-based measures commonly reveal traits,
dispositions, underlying attitudes, and implicit motivations of which
individuals are not fully aware.

11. 3. Conducting Personality Assessments
• Personality assessments should be conducted in a manner that helps people
feel comfortable during the evaluation, promotes their cooperation with the
testing procedures, and elicits from them data that can be interpreted
according to standard guidelines.
• To foster comfort and cooperation in a testing session, examiners must display
a supportive demeanor that minimizes anxiety and encourages openness.
• To obtain interpretable data, examiners need to communicate clearly and
adhere closely to standardized procedures for test administration.
• Examiners must also decide whether
and how to use computerized methods of recording and scoring test
responses.

12. 3. Conducting Personality Assessments
• Fostering comfort and cooperation
• Obtaining Interpretable Data
• Using clear language, clear instructions, understanding the cultural and social context
of the interviewee, adherence to the standard procedures of test administration etc.
• Using Computerized Formats
• Fast and efficient data collection
• Elimination of human and mechanical errors
• Scoring errors are also eliminated
• However, the use of computerized administration can be challenging and anxiety
provoking for individuals and might not be an equivalent to the non-computerized
booklet form

13. 4. Interpreting Personality Assessment Data
• The interpretation of personality assessment data consists of drawing
inferences about an individual’s current mental and emotional state
and the person’s disposition to think, feel, and act in certain ways.
• When organized into clear and coherent descriptions of personality
functioning, accurate interpretations provide a basis for formulating
conclusions and recommendations that are responsive to whatever
referral questions have been raised
• Examiners also keep the social, political, economic and cultural
contexts of individuals into focus when making decisions on
personality assessments

14. 4. Interpreting Personality Assessment Data
• Basis of Inferences
• Examiners draw inferences either on empirical, conceptual, statistical, clinical
judgment
• This means that assessment should be based on the use of nomothetic or on
the basis of an idiographic approach
• However, there shortcomings of each these methods
• Also, when conducting interpretations, personality assessors need to be
aware about the possible attempts of examinees to engage in impression
management including malingering, social desirability and much more
• Examinees also may have motivations to mislead examiners
• The relevance of the findings to the cultural and experiential contexts should
also be emphasized

15. 5. Reporting Personality Assessment Findings
• Multiple formats of personality assessment reporting exist and are
dependent upon the context in which the assessment has been done
including clinical, educational, forensic, organizational and other
settings. There are, however, some general areas and guidelines to be
considered when reporting findings of personality assessments
including
• (a) the provision of adequate identifying data concerning the person who has
been examined,
• (b) giving clear answers to whatever referral questions have been
raised, and
• (c) writing in ways that maximize readability and communication value.