Second Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weiner, Irving B., author. | Greene, Roger L.
Title: Handbook of personality assessment / Irving B. Weiner, Roger L. Greene.
Description: Second edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016034597 (print) | LCCN 2016047573 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119258889 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119258896 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119258902 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Personality assessment--Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classification: LCC BF698.4 .W45 2017 (print) | LCC BF698.4 (ebook) | DDC 155.2/8--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034597
In memory of W. Grant Dahlstrom,
John E. Exner Jr., Theodore Millon, and
Jerry S. Wiggins
Personality assessment consists of procedures for identifying what people are like and how they are likely to think, feel, and act. By illuminating the nature of people and their disposition to conduct themselves in certain ways, personality assessment plays important roles in psychological science and practice. Measures of personality characteristics help researchers examine individual differences in response style, unravel the origins of distinctive behavior patterns, and map developmental paths to diverse types of adaptation to life. Personality assessment helps practitioners discern an individual's frame of mind and behavioral tendencies. They can then use this information to reach relevant conclusions and make useful recommendations in a broad range of clinical, health care, forensic, educational, and organizational applications.
The personality characteristics that define the nature and dispositions of an individual can be assessed in several ways: (a) by conducting a diagnostic interview with the person; (b) by obtaining information about the person from historical records and from the reports of collateral persons who know the person well; (c) by observing the person's behavior; and (d) by administering to the person a battery of standardized personality assessment instruments.
The Handbook of Personality Assessment focuses on the last of these strategies: the assessment of personality functioning with standardized psychological tests. The chapters elaborate the clinical utility of personality assessment instruments in diagnostic evaluation and treatment planning, and they address as well the relevance of psychological test findings to decisions made in the courtroom and the workplace.
The text is addressed primarily to two groups of readers: graduate students who are learning about personality assessment methods and issues, and professional psychologists interested in refreshing and updating their familiarity with these methods and issues, or perhaps in becoming acquainted with measures other than the ones they customarily use. To these ends, the chapters in this Handbook provide basic instruction in the administration, scoring, and interpretation of the most widely used multidimensional personality assessment instruments, and they also review and comment on contemporary clinical and research literature concerning the scientific status and practical applications of these measures.
Part 1 of the Handbook comprises chapters on four general considerations in personality assessment: its history, procedures, psychometric foundations, and ethical requirements. Chapter 1 (on history) relates the scientific and professional development of personality assessment as a field of study and practice, with attention to trends over time and issues of terminology. Chapter 2 (on the assessment process) discusses the purposes of personality assessment and issues connected with collecting and using assessment information, including management of the referral process; selection of a test battery; integration of assessment data from multiple sources; and use of computer programs in test administration, scoring, and interpretation. Chapter 3 (on psychometric foundations) reviews procedures for determining the reliability and validity of assessment methods and delineates broad issues in clinical decision making, including adequate allowance for bias and base rates. Chapter 4 (on ethical considerations) discusses each of the 11 standards in the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association that have particular relevance to the personality assessment process.
Part 2 of the Handbook presents information about self-report personality inventories. Chapter 5 provides an overview of self-report inventories and the ways in which they resemble or differ from each other, including their item characteristics, their method of scale development, and their manner of determining test validity. The remaining chapters in Part 2 provide in-depth coverage of the most widely used and frequently studied personality assessment instruments of this kind. Chapter 6 addresses the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2);1 Chapter 7, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A); Chapter 8, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF); Chapter 9, the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV (MCMI-IV); Chapter 10, the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI); and Chapter 11, the NEO Personality Inventory-3 (NEO-PI-3). These six chapters are organized according to a template consisting of each instrument's history, administration, scoring, validity assessment, interpretation, applications, and psychometric foundations.
Part 3 of the Handbook presents information about what have traditionally been called “projective” measures but, for reasons discussed in Chapter 1, can more appropriately be categorized as performance-based measures. Five chapters provide in-depth coverage of the most widely used performance-based methods of personality assessment. Chapter 12 addresses the Rorschach Comprehensive System (RCS); Chapter 13, the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS); Chapter 14, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT); Chapter 15, figure drawing methods, including the Draw-A-Person (DAP), House-Tree-Person (HTP), and Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) tests; and Chapter 16, sentence completion methods, focusing on the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank (RISB) and the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT). The template for these five chapters consists of the nature, history, administration, scoring, interpretation, applications, and psychometric foundations of each of these measures.
Part 4 of the Handbook consists of sample interpretive reports generated by computer programs for the MMPI-2, MMPI-A, MMPI-2-RF, MCMI-IV, PAI, NEO-PI-3, RCS, and R-PAS. These sample reports, which include profiles of the test scores on which the interpretive statements are based, illustrate the breadth and depth of the information that can be obtained from personality assessment instruments. The conclusions and recommendations suggested in these reports illustrate as well their potential for helping examiners provide useful diagnostic consultations. However, readers should attend to the limitations as well as the advantages of computer-based test interpretations, as discussed in Chapter 2 and included in the caveats that accompany most computer-generated test reports.
We acknowledge the valuable suggestions of several distinguished colleagues in personality assessment who advised us in the preparation of the first edition of this Handbook: Marvin Acklin, Robert Archer, James Butcher, James Choca, Paul Costa, Leonard Handler, Gregory Meyer, Leslie Morey, David Nichols, Paul Retzlaff, Barry Ritzler, David Streiner, Donald Viglione, and Jed Yalof. For this second edition, we express special appreciation to Gregory Meyer for his recommendations and permission to reproduce information from the Rorschach Performance Assessment System scoring program. We also thank the American Psychological Association, the Caldwell Report, Pearson Assessments, Psychological Assessment Resources, and the University of Minnesota Press for permission to reprint some of their copyrighted materials.
Irving B. Weiner
Roger L. Greene
Irving B. Weiner, PhD, is a retired professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, and his positions since that time have included professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and head of the Division of Psychology at the University of Rochester Medical Center; professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Case Western Reserve University; and vice president and chief academic officer at the University of Denver and at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Dr. Weiner is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Psychological Science and a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology in clinical and forensic psychology. He is a past president of APA Divisions 5 (Quantitative and Qualitative Methods) and 12 (Society of Clinical Psychology), of the Society for Personality Assessment, and of the International Rorschach Society. He has received a Distinguished Contribution Award from the Society of Clinical Psychology and from the Society for Personality Assessment. His writings include numerous articles and chapters and the following books:
Roger L. Greene, PhD, is a distinguished emeritus professor at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology in Palo Alto, California, where he served as director of clinical training for 12 years. Dr. Greene has worked in a variety of clinical settings and with different types of patients in his clinical career. His particular area of interest clinically is the assessment and treatment of alcohol and drug abuse. He has written a number of texts and articles on the use of the MMPI-2. His most recent book, The MMPI2/MMPI-2-RF: An Interpretive Manual (3rd ed.) was published in 2011. His books on the MMPI/MMPI-2 have been among the standard references for over two decades. He is a fellow of Division 12 of APA and the Society for Personality Assessment. He has served on the board of trustees and as an associate editor of the Journal of Personality Assessment for the Society of Personality Assessment. He received the Bruno Klopfer Distinguished Contribution Award from the Society for Personality Assessment in 2010. His writings include numerous articles and chapters and the following books: