Chapter

Personality Assessment Paradigms

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  • Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)
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Abstract

Ever since the field of psychology has emerged, efforts have continued to explain personality in terms of different theories, models, and terminologies. Simultaneous to that is the line of devising and designing various personality testing and assessment methodologies. Defining personality in terms of different conceptualizations has been the ultimate aim of efforts by researchers to fill in the gaps in knowledge. However, the use of different assessment methodologies has attendant issues and raises many questions. Ranging from projective and semi-projective tests, through self-assessment and peer rating-based objective questionnaires and inventories developed using classical test theory, to the recently emerging situational judgment tests and application of item-response theory parameters, there have been enormous paradigm shifts in the methods of personality assessment. Although different researchers have provided inputs regarding the relative suitability and preference of one paradigm over the other, the question remains as to which paradigm explains personality optimally, and why any one particular paradigm should be preferred. Issues of relative psychometric advantages and disadvantages of each paradigm create a further dilemma in the minds of budding researchers. The present article is a meta-analytic synthesis of various personality assessment paradigms wherein the authors attempt to put forth all such challenging issues and try to find, and seek from eminent scientists, the answer to this dilemma.

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... This study had a focus on a joint investigation of linguistic and numerical WP characteristics and took into account students' skills in text comprehension and arithmetic, while previous studies often focused on one or the other aspect or skill (Daroczy et al. 2015). In identifying the difficulty level of WPs, previous research typically relied on classical test theory (CTT) in which the proportion of individuals answering the item correctly is used as the index for the item difficulty (Finch and French 2015;Parkash and Kumar 2016;Stage 2003). However, item difficulty index derived from CTT is often criticized because it is dependent on the sample (Chalmers 2012;Stage 2003). ...
... A widely recommended alternative to CTT is the item response theory (IRT) modelling (De Ayala 2009;Finch and French 2015;Reckase 2009), in which the difficulty level estimated with IRT refers to a probability of a correct response at a given level of participant ability (Finch and French 2015). With IRT, it is possible to obtain item characteristics (e.g., item difficulty level) that are not dependent on the examinee group (Parkash and Kumar 2016;Stage 2003). ...
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... (d) The "Civic engagement and responsibility" dimension was included. Although the current questionnaire bridges the gap mentioned above, some limitations inherent in self-report questionnaires should be noted, including response biases, socially desirable responses, misinterpretation of the meanings, and respondents' overestimation of their DL (Parkash & Kumar, 2016;Porat et al., 2018). Besides, the questionnaire can only show a pattern but cannot provide an in-depth explanation of why and how students score high or low. ...
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... The instruments used in the study were based on selfreporting, which is one of the most frequently used methods because of the advantages of collecting large amounts of data with less cost and time and being considered objective and scientific. However, several limitations should be noticed, including response biases, socially desirable responses, and respondents' faulty self-perceptions (Parkash & Kumar, 2016). Park, Chun, and Lee (2016) indicated that subjective and objective evaluations might have some discrepancy in outcomes, so it is better to triangulate the results than just using one measuring method. ...
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