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Self-Report Tests of Personality

Self-Report Tests of Personality

Self-report inventories are objective personality assessments that use multiple-choice items or numbered scales, typically ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). They are often called Likert scales after Rensis Likert. These inventories are widely used due to their ease of administration and cost-effectiveness. One of the most prominent examples is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), initially developed in the 1940s to assess abnormal personality traits.

Ordinal Level of Measurement

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The way a set of data is measured is called its level of measurement. Correct statistical procedures depend on a researcher being familiar with levels of measurement. For analysis, data are classified into four levels of measurement—nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.
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Five-Factor Theory of Personality

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Self-Evaluation: Self-Enhancement and Self-Verification

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Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

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Why Forced-Choice and Likert Items Provide the Same Information on Personality, Including Social Desirability.

Martin Bäckström¹, Fredrik Björklund¹

¹Lund University, Sweden.

Educational and Psychological Measurement

|May 17, 2024

Summary

Forced-choice and Likert-type formats yield similar personality data. Evaluatively neutralized items are proposed to effectively control social desirability in personality inventories.

Keywords:

forced-choice ipsative data personality measurement psychometrics social desirability

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A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons

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Published on: November 9, 2018

Area of Science:

Psychological Measurement
Personality Psychology
Social Psychology

Background:

The forced-choice response format is often favored over Likert-type formats for mitigating social desirability bias in personality assessments.
However, the comparative effectiveness of these formats in capturing genuine personality traits requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether forced-choice and Likert-type formats yield comparable trait information in personality inventories.
To explore alternative strategies for controlling social desirability bias in personality measurement.

Main Methods:

The study employed computational simulations to analyze data generated from both forced-choice and Likert-type response formats.
Simulations varied the number of items and the balance of positively and negatively keyed items within the forced-choice format.

Main Results:

Trait information derived from both forced-choice and Likert-type formats converges under conditions of a high item count and a balanced mix of item keying.
Simulations indicated that forced-choice items, similar to Likert-type items, do not inherently eliminate socially desirable responding.

Conclusions:

Under specific conditions, forced-choice and Likert-type formats provide equivalent personality trait information.
The findings suggest that neither format alone sufficiently controls for social desirability, highlighting the need for alternative methods.
The study proposes the use of evaluatively neutralized items as a promising approach to counteract social desirability across different response formats in personality measurement.