Research & Measurement 2

Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2)

567 true/false statements; Research, diagnosis, clinical use; Clinical scales (different aspects of the personalities) & validity scales (looking at if the person is answering in an honest way); Most widely used personality inventory used in clinical; Describes someones personality

Reliability

A test must have this; does it get consistent results?

Validity

A test must have this; does it measure what it says it measures? can be examined in a number of different ways, how do you decide you are measuring what you want to measure

Biological data

Another type of data also taken, but less likely used in clinical

Define what we are studying

First step in research

Apply; To diagnose if there is a personality disorder, identify what inventions or treatments would be appropriate and effective. By standardize tools or just getting to know that person

Fourth step in research

Initial interview/assessment

Personality assessment in clinical practice; talk to people, ask them about themselves and gather certain types of information; you get a feel or sense on the persons personality; some clinicians will use assessment tools as well to help them understand the person sitting across from them.

Ongoing sessions

Personality assessment in clinical practice; you get to know their personality more and how they present themselves as they get more relax in sessions with you; you get a feel of who they are and how they behave; May include testing

Measure/assess; What tools are being used to measure or assess what is being defined. Very important for the researcher and the clinician to determine the tools that they are using are appropriate, so they can be confident that they are measuring what they are supposed to be measuring

Second step in research

Nomothetic

Source of data; (fixed or standardized) simple more objective structured

Idiographic

Source of data; (flexible) more unique tell me about yourself, fill in the blank, answer this question, or write me an essay on Describing the unique individual, what is distrinct

Construct

Test must have this to be valid; abstract concept, theoretical abstraction (intelligence); validity is essential to show you are measuring what you are supposed to be measuring; do items on the test correlate with eachother, compare one test with another test that is highly valid.

Discriminant

Test must have this to be valid; between one construct and another, what a measure should not correlate with another, especially what is opposite of it. A test measuring shyness, should not correlate with a test measuring something else.

Face

Test must have this to be valid; not very convincing, when a test looks like it measures what it measures; if there hasn't been any studies to check validity, you can't have much confident that it is measuring what it is suppose to be measuring

Predictive

Test must have this to be valid; predict what a person is like or willing to do or engage in some behavior. predicts what behavior should be expected. Demonstrating how a person responds to the measure predicts something external to it.

Causality

Test must have this to be valid; relatively new, measures a quality that already exists, like test anxiety. Variation between this, everyone should have some level of that which should influence what happens. Certain levels of a particular characteristics and influences this.

Inter-rater

Test should have this to be reliable; has to do with observers, technique to make sure that a number of people gathering data have similar ratings

Internal consistency

Test should have this to be reliable; used to see if different items on the test or measurements correlate with eachother, internal because it is looking at the test, if there is a high correlation you have high this and it there is low correlation, you have low this, which probably shouldn't be on the test.

Test-retest

Test should have this to be reliable; you give the test one time and then give the test another time and you should expect the results to be very similar.

Split-half (odd & even)

Test should have this to be reliable; you split a test in half, compare responses of odd number questions to even number questions; are the answers similar in the way the person responds to questions. You would expect there would be no difference between odd and even.

Alternate Forms

Test should have this to be reliable; you want more than one version of the test have very similar questions and items, in reading level and what they are addressing, looking for consistency between alternate forms.

Predict; Allows us to say something about what we are measuring

Third step in research

Social desirability

Type of Non-content responding; When the person answers in a social desirable way, they aren't answering what is actually true. Sometimes people don't want to admit to things and want to make a good impression, so they don't answer truthfully about themselves. Good impression good citizen- they want to answer in a way that the researcher wants them to answer, what the clinician wants to hear Sometimes conscious or sometimes unconscious

Extreme responding

Type of Non-content responding; an individual always responds in an extreme way (strong agree or strongly disagree); that's not valid data about the person

Acquiescence

Type of Non-content responding; the person who is being interviewed is saying yes to everything

Observer

Type of data; focuses on the behavior on the individual, provided by people who know the person well.

Life record

Type of data; most common data taken in personality psychology; school records, medical records

Test

Type of data; obtained from experiments, using computer increase the use of test data, ready source of information of data

Self-report

Type of data; you ask the person to talk about themselves, most commonly used source of data in personality psychology, done by questionnaires or interviews, there are limits because the person may or may not be aware of their characteristics, or they may want to present themselves in a different way.

Correlational

Type of research design; Comparing responses from two or more variables; benefit: can gather a lot of data from a lot of different people; can measure personality variables, different characteristics or traits, how they go together or how they don't go together; you can use very large samples, there are a lot of personality tools with strong validity and reliability; cannot talk about cause or effect; not able to address causality; because you are using primarily self-report data, may get social desirable responses

Case Study

Type of research design; come from clinical treatment, can also come from research; intensive investigation on a single individual is done, can be very valuable to gather information on particular personality characteristics or the particular person; you cannot generalize a case study to anyone else but that person; valuable for gathering information and making research questions

Experimental

Type of research design; only way we can investigate cause and effect; gather subjects, divide into control and experimental group; you need to collect a representable sample; compare results on dependent variable due to the independent variable; you can talk about cause and effect; limit is you are doing it in an artificial setting which can affect the data you get

Variability in behavior

Type of target; how does this persons behavior differ, are they always this way or are their certain situations where they are different

Average behavior

Type of target; understand what this person is like, what is their average behavior like, what is most typical about this person; thought to reveal their true inner personality

Conscious thought

Type of target; what you can bring to mind readily

Unconscious thought

Type of target; what's outside of ones awareness

Non-content responding

We want to reduce this because it doesn't give us reliable or valid information

Life record, observer, test, and self- report

What does L.O.T.S data stand for?

Targets

areas of interest of assessment

Forced Choice Format

combat non-content responding; the good and bad component is removed; Maybe what you like isn't really in there so it doesn't really describe you, which is a limit to this

Response sets 'Non-content' responding

getting response that are not about the context you are asking about; you are getting responses that isn't what you are asking about

Assessment tools

items, tests, measures, instruments...and observations, interviews...Giving someone something to gather data and information about them

Interviews

most common source of data in practice and theory will guide the choice of the data to be collected and what aspect(s) or personality are most important to focus on. testing is always imperfect, and have limitations