Nomothetic and idiothetic measurement in personality

Lamiell (1981, 1982a) has recently advanced an idiographic approach to the measurement of personality that he has labeled “idiothetic” In contrast to classical nomothetic strategies, the idiothetic method of scaling personality traits discounts normative transformations of attribute scores and, according to Lamiell, provides the basis for a useful index of cross–situational behavior consistency An analysis of Lamiell's procedures indicates several problems with the idiothetic approach to personality assessment and with the proposed measure of behavior consistency Notable is the fact that the method does not account for base rates of behavior in situations and, therefore, may suggest anomalous interpretations of personality characteristics and of behavior consistencies It is argued that conventional nomothetic methods are sufficient for the goals of explaining and predicting behavior     

Common items and reliability in personality measurement

Most psychological tests and inventories, particularly in personality and attitude measurement, contain common items, that is, various subscales of the test or inventory may share one or more items in common. Surprisingly, the role of common items in such a fundamental personality test attribute as reliability is not known. The present report specifically considered common-item contributions to test internal consistency reliability using extant data from the California Psychological Inventory. No negative contribution of item overlap was found. To the contrary, it was concluded that the use of common items is an economical technique for increasing the total number of items in the scales, thus increasing scale internal reliabilities without increasing the overall number of items in the inventory.     

Item grouping and item randomization in personality measurement

This paper describes a study examining the impact of item order in personality measurement on reliability, measurement equivalence and scale-level correlations. A large sample of university students completed one of three forms of the International Personality Item Pool version of the Big Five personality inventory: items sorted at random, items sorted by factor, and items cycled through factors. Results showed that the underlying measurement model and the internal consistency of the IPIP-Big Five scale was unaffected by differences in item order. Also, most of the scale-level correlations among factors were not significantly different across forms. Implications for the administration of tests and interpretation of test scores are discussed, and future research directions are offered.     

孔子思想中的君子人格：心理学测量的探索

君子人格是中国文化(尤其是儒学思想)中的理想的人格特质, 对于理解中国文化心理具有重要意义, 但鲜有实证研究。通过经典文本的理论分析与心理测量的实证分析相结合的方法, 选取《论语》中孔子对君子的论述编制初测条目, 通过探索性和验证性因素分析、效标关联效度分析等实证研究方法(总样本量 = 1916), 对孔子思想中的君子人格的内在结构进行了探索, 并编制了具有良好信效度的测量工具。结果表明, 孔子思想中的君子人格包含了智仁勇、恭而有礼、喻义怀德、有所不为、持己无争5个因素。此外还考察了其与大五人格、中国人价值观、自我和谐、合作与竞争人格倾向、亲社会倾向等效标变量的相关关系。     

Testing the measurement equivalence of personality adjective items across cultures

Although previous research has examined cross-cultural differences in personality, many of these studies neglected to first establish that the measures being used were equivalent in meaning across cultures. Using samples of Chinese, Greek, and American respondents, the measurement equivalence of the Big Five Mini-Markers [Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg’s unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of Personality assessment, 63, 506–516] was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis. The results indicate that all of the scales demonstrate configural invariance, but fail to show metric or scalar invariance. Several adjectives from these scales were found to exhibit bias at the item-level. The practical implications of these results are discussed and future research is suggested.     

On the interrelations of syntax and semantics

Summary Proceeding from the assumption that the recall of sentence tense is affected by verb meaning, the following variations in verb meaning were introduced: Action vs. State and Terminal vs. Interminal. The influence of these aspects on the recall of the Present and Perfect tenses (in German) was tested in a three-factorial design. A distinct interaction was obtained between the factors Terminal/Interminal and sentence tense. The Action/State condition did not affect the recall of sentence tense. All tested aspects of verb meaning did however influence the recall of sentence content.The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Mr. B. Jankowski in the translation of this paper from an original German version.     

The effect of face-to-face interviewing on personality measurement

In recent years, an increasing number of nationally representative surveys in the social sciences and economics have implemented the Big Five model of personality. While many personality inventories were originally developed in the context of self-administered questionnaires, they are often used by large surveys in face-to-face interview settings instead. Drawing on an experimental research design, we studied the effect of this switch in the method of data collection on measurement invariance as well as measurement error and interviewer effects in the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP-IS). Although in some cases we found slightly stronger associations between interviewer and respondent personality in face-to-face settings, the results generally suggested strict measurement invariance–and therefore full comparability–across methods of data collection.     

Utility of personality measurement of clinic patients with insomnia

An assessment study examining the relationship between sleep quality and personality style in individuals presenting to a sleep clinic with symptoms of insomnia was conducted. The protocol entailed standard clinical interviews conducted by a board certified sleep physician and licensed clinical psychologist. Participants were then assessed using a standard interview and the Millon Clinical Multi-axial Inventory III (MCMI-III) A follow-up appointment was conducted to provide interpretation and treatment recommendations from the interview and testing data. The results from a review of 210 cases are presented in terms of their sleep quality and dominant MCMI-III patterns. Preliminary multivariate analyses indicated two common profiles that correspond to the presentation of insomnia symptomology. These clusters were termed "avoidant" and "anxious" profiles, accordingly. Item content analyses were conducted via the Noteworthy Item classification in the MCMI-III manual to determine the viability of a category determined by the authors called Sleep Behavior Preoccupation. Of this sample 17% fit into the category.     

Humility: Review of measurement strategies and conceptualization as personality judgment

Humility is an understudied virtue in positive psychology. Both conceptual and methodological challenges have retarded its study. In this article, we discuss how humility has been defined. Specifically, researchers disagree whether humility refers to the accuracy of an individual's view of self, or whether humility primarily describes someone's interpersonal stance toward others. We critique four approaches that researchers have used to measure humility: self-reports, implicit measures, social comparisons of self to others, and informant ratings of humility. We then theoretically elaborate on the later method, which has been mostly overlooked. Accordingly, we present a model of relational humility. We define humility as a relationship-specific personality judgment, and we describe the relationship factors that affect how humility is perceived [Funder, D.C. (1995 Funder, DC. 1995. On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psychological Review, 102: 652–670. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psychological Review, 102, 652–670.]. Finally, we provide next steps for researchers using a relational approach.     

Fully contextualized,frequency-based personality measurement: A replication and extension

We compared the predictive validity of two types of Frame-of-Reference personality measures to each other and to a baseline generic measure. Each version of the measures used a unique response-format referred to as frequency-based estimation that allowed the behavioral consistency of responses to be gauged. Generic personality scales, tagged scales with “at school”, and completely modified scales were compared in their prediction of academic performance, counterproductive academic behavior, and participant reactions. Results showed that completely contextualized measures were the most predictively valid and, contrary to our expectations, behavioral consistency did not moderate the relationships. Face validity and to a lesser extent perceived predictive validity improved with increasing contextualization. We discuss the implications of our results for personality assessment in applied settings.     

Factor structure and measurement invariance of a short measure of the Big Five personality traits

The main purpose of this study is to assess the factor structure and the measurement invariance of the Mini-International Personality Item Pool (Mini-IPIP; Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006). The Mini-IPIP is a brief instrument evaluating personality traits according to the Big Five models. Two samples were collected comprising nearly 800 participants. Confirmatory factor analyzes revealed a five-factor solution consistent with the Big Five model. Measurement invariance analyses showed that the Mini-IPIP was reasonably invariant across samples, genders and age groups. Overall, results pointed to a satisfactory factorial structure and an adequate invariance of the measure.