Methods of Assessment Projective Methods Objective Methods

1. Pavithra Narasimhan

2.  Personality tests help us understand our distinct character and
features.
 They're an assessment method that measures all of our unique
traits, such as:
 Behaviours: the way we conduct ourselves and our interpersonal
relations
 Emotions: our instinctive and intuitive feelings
 Attitudes: the way we think or feel about something
 Motivations: our reasons for behaving a particular way
 Values: our unique principles or standards of behaviour.

3.  Self-discovery: getting insight into who we are
 Research contribution: helping psychologist identify patterns between our
personality types and behaviours
 Self-development: bettering ourselves by identifying areas of development
 Career and academic counselling: identifying potential career paths and
informing our decision-making
 Job testing: testing for a new job position.
 Diagnosis: identifying potential personality disorders by analysing our
behaviours and mental functions.

4.  Projective tests
 Behavioural tests
 Objective test of personality (multiple choice, rating)?
Items in this format can be answered, scored, analyzed, and
interpreted quickly.

5.  These techniques are assumed to reveal those central aspects of
personality that lie in the unconscious mind of an individual.
 Unconscious motivations, hidden desires, inner fears and
complexes are presumed to be elicited by their unstructured
nature that affect the client’s conscious behaviour.

6.  i) Constructive: It includes all those tests and situations where the
construction of some specific task is to be done by the examinee. The subject
needs to frame a structure upon the situation presented by the examiner, and
be asked to draw a human figure allowing the person to freely express the
examiner’s inclination. (TAT)
 ii) Constitutive: This category includes those tests which require the
examinee to constitute structures upon some given unstructured materials, as
for example, The Rorschach Ink Blot technique.
 iii) Interpretative: It includes those test situations where the examinee has to
add a detailed meaning to the given situation. For example, Sentence
completion test and the Word Association Test.
 iv) Refractive: This category includes all those techniques through which the
examinee gets the opportunity to depict his personality in the form of
drawing, painting etc. Frank cited that graphology is the best example of this
category.


10.  These techniques are assumed to reveal those central aspects of
personality that lie in the unconscious mind of an individual.
 Unconscious motivations, hidden desires, inner fears and
complexes are presumed to be elicited by their unstructured
nature that affect the client’s conscious behaviour.

11.  Behaviorists assume that personality is a composite set of learned responses to
stimuli in the environment. Methods used are - interviews, direct supervision,
and self-observation.
 One of the methods is direct observation, that requires the psychologist to
observe the client while engaged in ordinary, daily-routine behaviour, at home,
school, workplace or any other natural setting.
 Among other methods often used by behavioural therapists are rating scales and
frequency counts.
 In a rating scale, either the psychologist or the client assigns a numeric rating or
some specific behaviour. On the other hand, in a frequency count, the frequency
of certain behaviours in a specified time limit is counted. Both rating scales and
frequency counts are being used by educators in the diagnosis of various
behavioural problems like attention deficit disorder etc.

12.  A structured interview is a quantitative research method where
the interviewer a set of prepared closed-ended questions in the
form of an interview schedule, which he/she reads out exactly
as worded.
 Interviews schedules have a standardized format which means
the same questions are asked to each interviewee in the same
order

13.  The interviewer asks open-ended questions based on a specific
research topic, and will try to let the interview flow like a
natural conversation.
 The interviewer modifies his or her questions to suit the
candidate's specific experiences.
 Unstructured interviews are sometimes referred to as
‘discovery interviews’ and are more like a ‘guided
conservation’ than a strict structured interview. They are
sometimes called informal interviews.

14.  The Production of Figure Drawings
• Very often for children who have limited verbal skills.
• Figure-drawing tests: Multi-dimensional? Affected by
drawing skills
 Projective Methods in Perspective
• Assumptions: Projective hypothesis
• Situational variables
• Psychometric considerations

15.  Mary is 35-year old. She is attractive and has a
doctorate in nuclear physics from MIT.
 Her career is considered very successful because by
the age of 30 she became a professor.
 But she has problems in relationship.
 She tried e-harmony.com and were approached by
several men.
 But none of them continued dating with her after
three meetings.
 How can you help her?
 What personality assessment approach will you use?

16.  Guess the next ?

17.  Approaches to Behavioral Assessment
• Behavioral observation and rating scales
• Situational performance measures
• Role play
• Psychophysiological methods
• Unobtrusive measures e.g. Website traffic log
 Advantages:
• provide behavioral baseline data.
• provide behavioral strengths and weaknesses across a variety of
situations and environmental conditions.

18.  Tell a story by looking at a picture.
 You may expose your conscious or unconscious ideas through
your language usage.

19.  The woman in the picture is a female scientist.
 She is brilliant, but she is under the supervision of a male
scientist. The man is not as good as the woman, but he is the
boss. He will take the findings as his own and claim the credit.
It is unfair.

20. Can you a story based on this picture?