Best Practices in Personality Assessment

Knoff (1995) indicated that Referral Question Consultation (RQC) can be applied to personality assessment and suggested several self‐report objective measures that could be consistent with this approach. The current article reviews the tools mentioned by Knoff, including the Children's Personality Questionnaire, The Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory, The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–Adolescents, The Personality Inventory for Youth, and The Self Report of Personality (SRP) from the Behavior Assessment System for Children. Each review addressed the reliability of the scales and composite scores, validity, usefulness of results for planning interventions, the empirical basis for analyses of individual items, and whether each measure accounted for response biases. The appropriateness of each for use with RQC, and individual strengths and weaknesses varied considerably. Therefore, practitioners should keep each test's limitations in mind when using it for intervention planning, and future research is needed to validate the tools for this purpose. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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See 3 more Smart Citations

Self‐report objective measures of personality for children: A review of psychometric properties for RQC

Burns

2002

Construct validity of the adjustment scales for children and adolescents and the preschool and kindergarten behavior scales: Convergent and divergent evidence

Canivez

Rains²

2002

Construct validity (convergent and divergent) of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents (ASCA; McDermott, Marston, & Stott, 1993) and the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales (PKBS; Merrell, 1994a) is presented. Regular classroom teachers (n ϭ 38) randomly selected 5-and 6-year-old children (N ϭ 123) and rated them on the ASCA and PKBS in counterbalanced order. Convergent evidence of construct validity was observed for the PKBS Externalizing Problems scale and the ASCA Overactivity syndrome. Divergent evidence of construct validity was provided for the PKBS Externalizing Problems scale and ASCA Underactivity syndrome. Convergent and divergent evidence of construct validity for the PKBS Internalizing Problems scale and ASCA Overactivity and Underactivity syndromes was mixed. Results were identical to those of Canivez and Bordenkircher (2002).

Stability of the adjustment scales for children and adolescents

Canivez

Perry

Weller

2001

Investigation of the short-term (90-day) stability of the Adjustment Scales for Children and Adolescents is reported for 124 randomly selected children in grades ranging from kindergarten to grade 12. Significant test-retest stability coefficients were obtained and mean differences across the retest interval did not exceed .8 raw score points. The Solitary Aggressive-Impulsive, Diffident, and Lethargic/Hypoactive syndromes and the global Underactivity scale showed significant raw score and T score changes across the retest interval, but the effect strengths were small. Syndromic Profile Classifications and Discriminant Classifications were also significantly consistent across the retest interval. Results were similar to those obtained in other stability studies of teacher report behavior rating scales. School psychologists prefer objective assessment methods that facilitate links between assessment and intervention (Reschly & Ysseldyke, 1995), rather than inferential methods, in assessing psychopathology and problem behavior. Consequently, standardized behavior rating scales and checklists have achieved great popularity among school and clinical psychologists (Merrell, 1994a).Among school psychologists, behavior rating scales are the most frequently used instruments in assessing emotional and behavioral difficulties of youths (Stinnett, Havey, & Oehler-Stinnett, 1994). Behavior rating scales are "one of the most efficient, sound, and effective ways . . . to identify a referred student's behavioral strengths and weaknesses . . ." (Knoff, 1995, p. 857) and their use has also been designated a "best practice" in the assessment of emotional and behavioral disorders (McConaughy & Ritter, 1995).In addition to their more objective method, behavior rating scales allow relatively unobtrusive evaluations of student behaviors in natural social settings such as schools, classrooms, and homes. Within the classroom and other school settings, teachers are natural observers and informants since they have the comparative experience of observing many students across time and varied social contexts. As such, they seem to take a normative perspective in rating difficulties in children. Consequently, teachers have often been considered among the most accurate adult raters of child behavior (Kamphaus & Frick, 1996). Behavior rating scales are also cost-effective methods for assessing different behaviors across different environments and raters.Although behavior rating scales have many positive qualities, there are potential threats to their validity such as rater bias (i.e., halo effect, leniency error), rater competency, relevant contact, and rater agreement. Rater agreement may not necessarily be a problem as it is possible that behaviors may vary with respect to different environments and the scale may simply measure those differences. School psychologists are generally aware of classroom differences and the impact on behaviors but need to keep this issue in mind in the assessment process. Many behavior rating scales have also bee...