Emerging Issues and Methods in Personality Assessment

John A. Schinka, Roger L. Greene, John A. Schinka, Roger L. Greene

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134806331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychische Gesundheit in der Psychologie

This book constitutes a collection of articles that were written for, and recently published as, special sections in three consecutive issues of the Journal of Personality Assessment. Part I provides lucid commentaries on the current status of and future issues regarding the Rorschach and MMPI-2 and other instruments, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -- Adolescent (MMPI-A), the Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R), the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems -- Circumplex version (IIP-C), the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R), and the third edition of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III). The authors not only participated in the dvelopment of the instruments, but continue to lead the research effort in their application in both clinical and research settings. Part II addresses several issues that have been recurring themes, and often topics of debate, in the research and professional literature. The contributors discuss the impact of the five-factor model on personality assessment, the issue of deception in personality assessment, and various critical issues in the measurement of mood states. Other articles focus on the integration of the MMPI-2 and Rorschach and the process that clinicians should follow when applying scientific knowledge to clinical practice. Part III is primarily devoted to overviews of several statistical methods that are employed infrequently in personality assessment research, but have great potential in contributing to the understanding of the complex data sets often encountered in the measurement and study of personality. These articles serve as both an introduction and a brief tutorial for personality researchers who are unfamiliar with the subject matter. They are valuable references that will form the basis for evaluating the appropriate use of these methods in published research in their areas of interest.

PART I

Personality Assessment Instruments: Current Status and Future Directions

In this first collection of chapters, Irving Weiner and Roger Greene have provided lucid commentaries on the current status of the Rorschach and MMPI-2, respectively. Because these instruments are the most commonly researched and discussed in clinical personality assessment, their comments are valuable in themselves. Their presentations also set the stage for chapters by John Exner and Alex Caldwell that address important issues that will face both researchers and clinicians in the near future with these same two instruments. The remainder of the chapters in this special section address similar issues for instruments whose importance has come to the forefront of personality evaluation in the past decade: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory—Adolescent (MMPI-A: Butcher et al., 1992), the Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R: Wiggins, 1995) and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems–Circumplex version (IIP-C; Alden, Wiggins, & Pincus, 1990), the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO–PI–R: Costa & McRae, 1992), and the third edition of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III: Millon, 1994). The authors addressing these issues—Robert Archer for the MMPI-A, Jerry Wiggins and Krista Trobst for the IAS and IIP-C, Robert McCrae and Paul Costa for the NEO–PI–R, and Theodore Millon and Roger Davis for the MCMI-III—participated not only in the development of the respective instruments, but continue to lead the research effort in the application of these instruments in both clinical and research settings.

REFERENCES

Alden, L. E., Wiggins, J. S., & Pincus, A. L. (1990). Construction of circumplex scales for the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems. Journal of Personlaity Assessment, 55, 521–536.

Butcher, J. N., Williams, C. L., Graham, J. R., Archer, R. P., Tellegen, A., & Kaemmer, B. (1992). Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescents. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Professional manual for the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Millon, T. (1994). Manual for the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III. Minneapolis, MN: National Computer Systems.

Wiggins, J. S. (1995). Interpersonal adjective scales: Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc.

1

Current Status of the Rorschach Inkblot Method

Irving B. Weiner

Department of Psychiatry

University of South Florida

The current scientific, clinical, and professional status of the Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM) is reviewed with respect to its psychometric properties, the applied purposes it can be expected to serve, the extent of its use, and the nature of prevailing attitudes toward it. Available evidence indicates that the RIM is a psychometrically sound measuring instrument that provides valid assessments of personality characteristics and can facilitate differential diagnosis and treatment planning and evaluation. The RIM continues as in the past to be widely used by both clinicians and researchers. However, the esteem in which it is held by practitioners, who are generally agreed that clinical psychologists should be competent in Rorschach assessment, is not universally shared by academicians, many of whom presently question the future place of Rorschach training in graduate education.

How fitting it is to contemplate the status of the Rorschach Inkblot Method (RIM) in 1996, the 75th anniversary of Hermann Rorschach’s (1921/1942) publication of Psychodiagnostics. Surely, in today’s fast-paced world such longevity speaks to the quality of a clinical method and to the genius of its creator. From shaky Swiss beginnings through times of repudiation and renaissance, its survival repeatedly threatened both by excessive enthusiasm and unwarranted disparagement, the RIM has emerged worldwide as a frequently used and highly regarded measure of personality functioning. Although there has long been and remains a formidable corps of Rorschach detractors who deplore its use and demean its value, the distinction of the inkblot method derives not from its age, but from its well-documented capacities to elucidate the human condition.

Except in passing, this article will address neither the history of Rorschach assessment nor previous debates concerning its merit; both of these topics are considered in detail elsewhere (see, e.g., Ellenberger, 1954; Exner, 1993, chap. 1; Weiner, 1977, 1996). Instead, this article focuses on the current status of the RIM, with specific attention to (a) its scientific status, as inferred from its psychometric properties; (b) its clinical status, as determined by the purposes that it can be expected to serve in applied practice; and (c) its professional status, as defined by how widely it is being used and by the nature of prevailing attitudes toward it.

By way of further introduction, comment may be in order concerning the preference reflected here to refer to the Rorschach as a method and not merely as a test. Like other personality tests, the Rorschach includes scores and indices that measure aspects of personality functioning. The Rorschach is more than a test, however, because its utility is not limited to applications of the scores and indices that it yields or to interpretive strategies rooted in any one theoretical frame of reference. Rather, as I have elaborated elsewhere (Weiner, 1994b, 1995c), the Rorschach is a multifaceted method of generating structural, thematic, and behavioral data that can be applied in both quantitative and qualitative terms and can be interpreted from many different theoretical perspectives. Accordingly, to recognize that the Rorschach functions not only as a personality test but as a method of generating useful information in other ways as well, it seems appropriate to refer to it as the RIM.

SCIENTIFIC STATUS

The scientific status of a measuring instrument is a function of its psychometric properties. By prevailing standards, an instrument is considered psychometrically sound when (a) trained examiners can reach reasonable agreement in scoring its variables; (b) estimates of its reliability indicate that it provides reasonably accurate information, that is, the “obtained” scores it yields closely approximate what the “true” scores are; (c) its demonstrated corollaries identify purposes for which it is reasonably valid; and (d) normative data concerning its descriptive statistics among various populations are adequate to allow comparisons of individuals to appropriate reference groups (Anastasi, 1988, chaps. 4–8).

The RIM, when administered and coded according to the Comprehensive System (Exner, 1993), satisfies each of these four psychometric requirements. Additionally, even though no other general Rorschach system has been demonstrated to rest on a solid scientific foundation, numerous special scales and indices developed outside of the Comprehensive System have shown sufficient interrater agreement, retest reliability, and construct validity to be considered psychometrically sound.

Turning to the evidence in these respects, studies of interrater agreement indicate that all of the variables coded in the Comprehensive System can be reliably scored. The levels of agreement typically found exceed 90% for location scores, pairs, Populars, and Z scores; are somewhat lower for form quality and content categories; and fall to the middle or lower 80s for determinants and Special Scores (Exner, 1991, pp. 459–460; 1993, p. 138). McDowell and Acklin (1996) recently reported an overall mean percentage agreement of 87% in a study of Rorschach interrater reliability.

The capacity of an instrument to be reliably scored does not guarantee that interrater agreement will in fact characterize a particular research study, however. For this reason, the Journal of Personality Assessment (JPA) began in 1991 to require Rorschach research articles to include the level of scoring agreement achieved by the examiners in the study being reported (Weiner, 1991). A required minimum of 80% agreement has not reduced the frequency with which Rorschach research articles have been appearing in JPA, which would seem to indicate that adequately trained researchers are having no difficulty in coding the instrument reliably. This being the case, there is certainly reason to expect that adequately trained practitioners as well as researchers are scoring the Rorschach reliably in their work.

The reliability of Rorschach data has been documented in a series of retest studies with both children and adults over retest intervals ranging from 7 days to 3 years. Among 100 nonpatient adults who were reexamined after 3 years, 13 core variables showed stability coefficients of .80 or more (Z frequency, Lambda, M, Active movement, FC, SumC, Affective Ratio, Sum T, Sum V, X+%, Egocentricity Ratio, Sum Critical Special Scores, and Experience Actual); six other core variables had stability coefficients greater than .70 (Response Total, Passive movement, CF + C, Popular, FM, and Experienced Stimulation; Exner & Weiner, 1995, pp. 21–27).

As for the validity of Rorschach assessment, the scientific merit of the instrument was confirmed in a series of meta-analytic reviews that led Parker, Hanson, and Hunsley (1988) to conclude that the RIM has demonstrated adequate validity by usual psychometric standards and is comparable to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) in this respect. Applying procedures developed by Hedges and Olkin (1985) for calculating unbiased estimates to the results of 411 studies, Parker et al. derived population estimates of convergent validity coefficients of .41 for the Rorschach and .46 for the MMPI, with there being no statistically significant difference between these values.

Subsequent to the Parkeret al. (1988) study, Shontz and Green (1992) published an evaluation of trends in Rorschach research in which they identified a need for methodologically improved studies concerning practical applications of the instrument. In this same article, however, they indicated that “definitive statements can now be made about the psychometric properties of the Rorschach,” because the meta-analytic reviews have “all concluded that the Rorschach is reliable and valid when it is properly used” (p. 149).

With respect to the importance of adequate normative data, the Rorschach Comprehensive System provides detailed descriptive statistics for each of its coded variables on a sample of 700 nonpatient adults stratified to represent the 1980 U.S. census; on 1,390 children and adolescents separately for each age from 5 to 16; and on patient reference groups of 320 hospitalized schizophrenics, 315 hospitalized depressives, 440 diagnostically unspecified outpatients, and 180 outpatients with character disorders (Exner, 1993, chap. 12). The size and diversity of these normative and reference samples provide more standardization information than is available for most psychological assessment measures and establishes the RIM as adequately normed for a U.S. population.

Looking beyond the Comprehensive System, evidence of adequate interscorer agreement, retest reliability, and criterion or construct validity has emerged as well for numerous specific Rorschach scales and indices developed for special assessment purposes, many of which are based largely on codification of thematic imagery. Among examples of such psychometrically sound specific scales currently receiving attention in the literature are the Rorschach Defense Scales (Cooper, Perry, & Arnow, 1988), the Rorschach Oral Dependency Scale (Bornstein, 1996), the Ego Impairment Index (Perry, Viglione, & Braff, 1992), the Mutuality of Autonomy Scale (Urist, 1977), and several other measures of object relatedness (Stricker & Healey, 1990). The development of these scales, along with ongoing research with the Comprehensive System, provides abundant evidence that the RIM is a psychometrically sound personality assessment instrument and one that lends itself to continuing discovery of new ways to codify and apply the data it generates.

Finally, with respect to the scientific status of the RIM, considerable attention has been paid of late to the application of appropriate methodology in Rorschach research and data analysis. For current information concerning methodological issues in investigative work with the Rorschach, the reader is referred to contributions by Exner (1995) and Weiner (1995b).

CLINICAL STATUS

The clinical status of an assessment instrument is determined by the purposes it can be expected to serve in applied practice. The current clinical status of the RIM thus depends on what Rorschach assessors are able to do with the data they obtain. Present knowledge in this regard can be summarized in reference to four clinically relevant assessment tasks: personality description, differential diagnosis, treatment planning and evaluation, and behavioral prediction.

Personality Description

Because the RIM is basically a personality assessment instrument, descriptions of personality functioning hold the key to the purposes it can be expected to serve. The range of appropriate Rorschach applications and the utility of whatever conclusions and recommendations the instrument suggests will always be a function of (a) the relevance of particular personality characteristics to the assessment task at hand and (b) the accuracy with which the RIM describes these personality characteristics. With respect to describing personality functioning, it is helpful to consider separately what Rorschach data can indicate about personality structure and personality dynamics.

Personality structure. Personality structure refers to the nature of people as defined by their current frame of mind (personality states) and their abiding dispositions to think, feel, and act in certain ways (personality traits). Personality states comprise a broad range of relatively transitory affects and attitudes that are elicited by situational circumstances and are coterminus with them. Of such states, the one best measured by the Rorschach is a generally elevated level of subjectively felt distress that combines elements of anxiety and depression. As documented in the Comprehensive System (Exner, 1993), acute situational distress is suggested by the general index of D < AdjD and by specific elevations in m (helplessness), Y (hopelessness), T (loneliness), V (guilt/remorse), and Color-Shading Blends with Y (dysphoria).

Traits comprise a broad range of fairly stable personality characteristics and orientations of which the following, as again documented in the Comprehensive System volumes (Exner, 1991, 1993; Exner & Weiner, 1995), have valid Rorschach correlates: (a) preferred patterns of attending to experience and capabilities for doing so openly, consistently, efficiently, and realistically; (b) characteristic styles of using ideation and capacities to think coherently and logically; (c) preferred ways of experiencing and expressing emotions and abilities to modulate affect sufficiently and pleasurably; (d) customary methods of managing stress and resources for doing so adequately; (e) clarity of identity formation and nature of attitudes toward oneself; and (f) attitudes toward other people and preferred style of interpersonal relatedness.

Personality dynamics. Personality dynamics refers to the nature of people as defined by the underlying needs, attitudes, conflicts, and concerns that influence how they are likely to think, feel, and act at particular points in time and in particular kinds of circumstances. Personality dynamics are revealed on the Rorschach by responses in which participants attribute characteristics to their percepts that go beyond ...