PSYC37H3 Chapter 8: Chapter 8(B).docx
Document Summary
Two approaches have dominated the field when assessing personality: unstructured and structured. Unstructured methods such as the rorschach, tat and sentence completion blanks. In contrast, structured approaches are self-report inventories and behaviour rating scales. Whereas only a handful of unstructured has ever risen to distinction, the number of structured instruments for assessment has grown exponentially structured approaches are considered objective as contrasted with projective. Contemporary psycho-etricians have relied mainly upon three tactics for personality test development; theory bounded approaches, factor analytic approaches and criterion-key methods. Theory-guided inventories are designed around a pre-existing theory. Theory-guided inventories stand in contrast to factor-analytic approaches which often produce a retrospective theory based upon initial test findings. They also differ from the criterion-key methods because they lack the empirical evidence. The personality research form is a true-false inventory based loosely on murray"s theory of manifest needs (tat).
