Describe self-report inventories.

  Self-report inventories, also known as personality inventories are self rating questionnaires, where the individual describes own feelings, environment, and reactions of others towards self. In other words, on the self-report inventories a person reports about one’s own self in the light of the questions (or items) given therein.. Hence, the method is known as a self-report inventory.

Self-report inventories are classified into five types, as given below:

1) Inventories that attempt to measure social and certain other specifies traits such as self confidence, dominance, extroversion, etc.

2) Inventories that attempt to evaluate the adjustment of the person to different aspects of the environment such as school, home, health.

3) Inventories that attempt to evaluate pathological traits.

4) Inventories that attempt to screen individuals into two or three groups.

5) Inventories that attempt to measure attitudes, interests, and values of persons.

Let us deal with the above five self report inventories one by one.

1) These are tests or inventories which attempt to measure social and other specific traits including self confidence, dominance, extraversion etc. Examples of such an inventory are that of Bernreuter Personality Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Differential Personality Scale etc.

2) These are inventories that try to evaluate the level of adjustment of a person to different aspects of one’s life. For instance some of the adjustments that are studied here include adjustment to self, health, home and school. Example for such an inventory is Bells Adjustment Inventory.

3) These are Inventories that attempt to evaluate the pathological traits in an individual. Some of these try to evaluate a large number of traits of pathological nature, while some confine to a few pathological traits. For instance the MMPI (The Minnessota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) tries to get at a very large number of pathological traits in addition to some normal traits. The 16 PF inventory attempts to evaluate 16 personality traits including 4 pathological traits. These pathological traits may include hysteria, paranoia, hypomania, depression, schizophrenia, etc.

4) These are inventories which attempt to screen individuals into two or three groups. The Cornell Index is the best example of such as inventory. The Cornell Index screens the persons into two groups - those having psychosomatic difficulties like asthma, peptic ulcer, migraine, etc., and those not having them that is, those who are normal.

5) These are Inventories that attempt to measure attitudes, interests, and values of persons. E.g., In regard to attitude we can give the example of Bogardus Social distance scale; in regard to interest inventory we can give the example of Strong Vocational Interest Blank, and in regard to values, we can give the example of Allport-Vernon Study of Vaues Scale.

This classification is based upon the purpose and the nature of item content. All the above self-report inventories are based upon same principle, which states that behaviour is nothing but the manifestation of trait and one can find out the presence or absence of a trait by means of assessing the behaviour. Self-report inventories are more widely used than any form of personality assessment. These are paper-and-pencil test that ask people to respond to questions concerning their traits, values, attitudes, motives, feelings, interests, abilities.

The term “self-report” refers to any information the person reveals directly about himself / herself by responding to specific questions or items with a limited number of prescribed choices (e.g.”Yes”.“No”, “Always”, “Don’t know”).

General feature of self-report test is standardisation of response alternatives. That is, people taking the tests have to select either true or false, agree or disagree, an alternative that varies from 1(very characteristic of me) to 6, and so on.

In this manner, objectivity is achieved by restricting the degree of freedom people have in responding to test items.

Similarly standardisation of scoring procedures minimises the risk of personal bias of the persons scoring the tests.

Self- report inventories differ in regard to the number of personality dimensions they measure at one time.

Single-traits Tests

These are developed and used by researchers to measure some specific aspects of personality. They then examine whether people who score at the upper and lower end on the trait measure perform differently on the behavioural measure or differ on the self-report measure. In other words any person participating in the study may receive a high score (or may receive a medium or low score), but every person’s score is equally meaningful as a representation of that person’s personality.

a) Some single-dimension tests also provide separate measures of two or three traits. Examples of single-trait tests include a) the Locus of Control Scale (Rotter, 1966),

b) the Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman, 1978),

c) the Self Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974).

The scores obtained from these tests are assumed to reflect relatively stable individual differences along specific trait dimensions. In addition to these scales, there are many self-report inventories that measure several personality dimensions simultaneously.

Multidimensional Tests

These multi-dimensional tests have the advantage of providing a more comprehensive overview of the person being assessed and are used extensively in clinical, counseling, and personnel settings. For instance the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16-PF) is a 187-item test which measures 16 source traits of the normal personality identified by Raymond Cattell (1965). Scores derived from each of the source trait measures (e.g., submissive-dominant, trustingsuspicious) are plotted on a graph to provide a personality profile. This profile may be used by psychologist for counselling and to make important employment and promotion decisions about people.

Strength and Weakness of Self-report Tests

Assessment of individual differences is a significant aspect of personology. Much emphasis has been placed on self-reports as the basis for measuring the individual differences. The major advantage is that self-report tests provide more thorough, precise, and systematic information about an individual’s personality than does casual information. The strengths of the self report inventories are given below:

• The objectivity of scoring minimizes personal or theoretical bias

• Also, self-report measures can be administered easily by someone with relatively little formal training.

• Self-report tests have greater reliability than do other assessment techniques.

• Finally, multi-dimensional inventories allow for measurement of several different personality traits at once.

Apart from the aforesaid, strengths, self report tests have some weaknesses.

For PDF copy of Solved Assignment

Any University Assignment Solution

WhatsApp - 8409930081 (Paid)