Personality and Assessment Theories

Personality and Assessment Theories

Personal Interview

A personal interview is a conversation with a purpose, during the interview you obtain information about the individual that you are interviewing. Some of the interviews that are used are unstructured, that is when the interviewer asks the individual questions about any material that has come up, and asks follow up questions when ever appropriate. When conducting systematic research on personality, investigators often like to use and rely on the structured interview. In this interview the order and the content of the questions are fixed, and the interviewer adheres to set the format. Less personal, this kind of interview allows the interviewers to obtain information from everyone else that was interviewed as well. Psychodynamic, social learning and humanistic theories relate to the personal interview (Morris, C. G., & Maisto, A. A., 2002).

Direct Observation

Another way that is used to see how a person behaves is through observing the individual through out a period of time. Behaviorists and social learning theorist prefer using this method of assessing personality, because it allows them to see how some situations influence their behavior, and to note the range of behavior that the individual is capable of exhibiting. When most people are being watch they have a self conscious so there for observation works best in young children. This technique can be used successfully with any age and any setting. Social learning theory relates to direct observation (Morris, C. G., & Maisto, A. A., 2002).

Objective Tests

Objective tests are generally tests that are written tests that are administered and scored according to the standard procedure. The tests are usually constructed so that the person merely chooses yes/no response or selects one answer among many choices that are given. Objective tests are the tests that are most widely used for assessing personality, but there are two serious drawbacks. First...