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Personality assessment via questionnaires. Current issues in theory and measurement
Person. indiuid. Difl Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 595-596, 1987 Pergamon Journals Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
SPECIAL
REVIEW
A. Angleitner and J. S. Wiggins (Ed.): Personality Assessment via Questionnaires. Current Issues in Theory and Measurement. Springer Verlag, Berlin (1986) pp. 269, Price: DM98.
This edited book of readings about the construction of personality questionnaires is one of the best sources of information on the subject that I know. It is particularly useful because it contains reports of European work which is not well known in this country and is a refreshing change from the usual Anglo-American diet. The book has four sections: the trait concept and personality questionnaires; item generation and scale construction; models of item responding and self-presentation and finally problems of divergent and discriminant validation. Two papers address the problem of whether traits are measured by questionnaires. The first by Amelang and Borkenau examines the various difficulties that surround this topic-ross-situational consistency, relevance of traits to subjects, observability of traits, social desirability, inter &-and reports some of their own work on these questions. They conclude that traits are alive and well and that under certain conditions questionnaires can provide valid measurement. Broad multiple-act can be predicted and some people are far more predictable than others. The second paper by Fiske is predictably more gloomy. He sees little scientific value in personality questionnaires and argues that what is needed is a theory of the processes underlying self reports, so that this could guide questionnaire construction. There is no doubt that these two chapters are a repository of references and arguments on this topic and as such they are valuable especially for advanced students and researchers. Nevertheless, I was horrified to find no reference in either chapter to the work of Cattell (although he is mentioned in the first chapter). Yet the Cattellian argument that simple structure factors are basic dimensions accounting for the variance in questionnaires and that psychological experiments have indicated the nature of these variables is ignored. It does seem, certainly at the second-order, that personality questionnaires can clearly measure traits. The second section on the construction of questionnaire items constitutes remarkably detailed studies of exactly what goes into writing items in personality inventories. These are not chapters to read lightly: they are chapters for the serious test constructor who wants to know how to write items. Items have been studied from the viewpoint of their surface structure, their ambiguity, their abstractedness, their self-reference, their evaluative characteristics, whether or not they are overt or covert, whether they refer to biographical facts, or attitudes and beliefs and this is only a sample. After reading these chapters I felt a terrible inhibition that I could no longer write items again and that all items were inevitably flawed. However, these chapters need, perhaps, a counterweight of old-fashioned British empiricism. In the tradition of Burt, Cattell and Eysenck, the London School, much depends on the item analyses. If items load only on one factor and that factor is experimentally identified and validated, as has been the case with Neuroticism, for example, then the items are all right. It is noteworthy that at the end of these chapters the work of Jackson and his PRF is cited with approval. Yet there is little evidence for the validity of these scales. They are psychometrically brilliant tests but of what? This is the danger of itemetrics. However, as a guide to item writing, these chapters are most useful. The third section is concerned with how subjects respond to items. Jackson’s paper is a study of the processes underlying responses to items. This approach seems somewhat depressing to me. It seems to suffer from the worst excesses of experimental psychology. The response to an item is actually not a highly interesting sample of behaviour compared with the whole range of human behaviour. However, as Jackson argues, it can be studied with great precision. So could the hooded rat and as a personality psychologist I cannot help asking where that got us. Items are interesting not per se but because the response to them reflects an underlying factor which is important beyond the world of the test-the difference between a valid factor and a bloated specific. This chapter by Jackson, which is technically excellent, seems generalisable only to other similar items, as he admits towards the end “. of course in the real world a prediction is more complicated “. If the fruits of these investigations into the response processes to personality items are used to construct tests which are supposed to measure important psychological variables then psychology will gain from this expertise. However, there is a danger that this branch of psychometrics might become an end in itself. Again, I must contrast the robust simplicity of the EPQ which works and measures important psychological variables. Paulhus has a neat paper on the way in which self-deception and impression management influence test responses, impression management being deliberate dissimulation which is designed to impress. As he points out self-deception is intertwined with a number of personality dimensions. If it were separated out these could lose some of their predictive power. Impression management, on the other hand, is the curse of the personality test user, especially in the field of selection, so that an ability to measure this and if possible to control for it would be extremely valuable. The paper by Hofstee and Smid demonstrates that complex methods of scoring questionnaires including the use of moderating variables add nothing to the validity of the results. This paper was extremely pleasing to me as I have always argued that if there are important factors underlying item variance they will emerge although systematic item errors must be avoided. It should be pointed out that such flaws can always be recognised if attempts are made to identify factors experimentally or by locating them in factor space or by relating them to external criteria rather than relying on item loadings. Finally in this section, Helfrich discusses linguistic variables-negation, the use of the passive voice and the use of indefinite terms such as ‘some’ or ‘many’ as well as deep and surface structures-and their influence on understanding items. Again this chapter should be useful for the test constructor. The last section consists of two papers on convergent and discriminant validity by Schwarzer and by Rudinger and Dommel. Both these are concerned with the multitrait-multimethod approach, using the structural equations method 595
596
SPECIAL REVIEW
via Lisrel and confirmatory factor analysis. I was not familiar with this work and found these chapters excellent guides and introductions. There are statistical difficulties with confirmatory analysis, notably that the chi-square test is not good at discriminating between hypotheses, and given the large sample sizes needed for factor analyses the practical problems involved in these methods may be overwhelming. This difficulty was highlighted by the fact that one of the examples in the chapter was thus flawed, with an n of only 35. In the epilogue to this book Wiggins claims that the issues in the present volume are so complex and specialised that the pioneers of personality measurement would not understand them. He further argues that it is difficult to say where we are going but that it is reassuring to note our relative position. There is no doubt about the formidable complexity of some of this book, well explicated though it is. Nor is there any doubt about its specialised nature. This is the one slight misgiving that I have about this book. If one is interested in personality measurement as a method of investigating personality then many of these chapters seem far removed from this purpose. The measurement itself has become an end. That is why Wiggins’ final words are important: are tests constructed with such psychometric sophistication actually more powerful scientific instruments than their predecessors? I am by no means certain that this is the case. However, this is a personal opinion of a psychometrist who has preferred psychological meaning to technical brilliance. As a guide to modern work in personality assessment, except for its lack of a chapter on modern factor analytic work, which is regarded as old-fashioned, it can be thoroughly recommended. PAUL
KLINE
SPECIAL
REVIEW
A. Angleitner and J. S. Wiggins (Ed.): Personality Assessment via Questionnaires. Current Issues in Theory and Measurement. Springer Verlag, Berlin (1986) pp. 269, Price: DM98.
This edited book of readings about the construction of personality questionnaires is one of the best sources of information on the subject that I know. It is particularly useful because it contains reports of European work which is not well known in this country and is a refreshing change from the usual Anglo-American diet. The book has four sections: the trait concept and personality questionnaires; item generation and scale construction; models of item responding and self-presentation and finally problems of divergent and discriminant validation. Two papers address the problem of whether traits are measured by questionnaires. The first by Amelang and Borkenau examines the various difficulties that surround this topic-ross-situational consistency, relevance of traits to subjects, observability of traits, social desirability, inter &-and reports some of their own work on these questions. They conclude that traits are alive and well and that under certain conditions questionnaires can provide valid measurement. Broad multiple-act can be predicted and some people are far more predictable than others. The second paper by Fiske is predictably more gloomy. He sees little scientific value in personality questionnaires and argues that what is needed is a theory of the processes underlying self reports, so that this could guide questionnaire construction. There is no doubt that these two chapters are a repository of references and arguments on this topic and as such they are valuable especially for advanced students and researchers. Nevertheless, I was horrified to find no reference in either chapter to the work of Cattell (although he is mentioned in the first chapter). Yet the Cattellian argument that simple structure factors are basic dimensions accounting for the variance in questionnaires and that psychological experiments have indicated the nature of these variables is ignored. It does seem, certainly at the second-order, that personality questionnaires can clearly measure traits. The second section on the construction of questionnaire items constitutes remarkably detailed studies of exactly what goes into writing items in personality inventories. These are not chapters to read lightly: they are chapters for the serious test constructor who wants to know how to write items. Items have been studied from the viewpoint of their surface structure, their ambiguity, their abstractedness, their self-reference, their evaluative characteristics, whether or not they are overt or covert, whether they refer to biographical facts, or attitudes and beliefs and this is only a sample. After reading these chapters I felt a terrible inhibition that I could no longer write items again and that all items were inevitably flawed. However, these chapters need, perhaps, a counterweight of old-fashioned British empiricism. In the tradition of Burt, Cattell and Eysenck, the London School, much depends on the item analyses. If items load only on one factor and that factor is experimentally identified and validated, as has been the case with Neuroticism, for example, then the items are all right. It is noteworthy that at the end of these chapters the work of Jackson and his PRF is cited with approval. Yet there is little evidence for the validity of these scales. They are psychometrically brilliant tests but of what? This is the danger of itemetrics. However, as a guide to item writing, these chapters are most useful. The third section is concerned with how subjects respond to items. Jackson’s paper is a study of the processes underlying responses to items. This approach seems somewhat depressing to me. It seems to suffer from the worst excesses of experimental psychology. The response to an item is actually not a highly interesting sample of behaviour compared with the whole range of human behaviour. However, as Jackson argues, it can be studied with great precision. So could the hooded rat and as a personality psychologist I cannot help asking where that got us. Items are interesting not per se but because the response to them reflects an underlying factor which is important beyond the world of the test-the difference between a valid factor and a bloated specific. This chapter by Jackson, which is technically excellent, seems generalisable only to other similar items, as he admits towards the end “. of course in the real world a prediction is more complicated “. If the fruits of these investigations into the response processes to personality items are used to construct tests which are supposed to measure important psychological variables then psychology will gain from this expertise. However, there is a danger that this branch of psychometrics might become an end in itself. Again, I must contrast the robust simplicity of the EPQ which works and measures important psychological variables. Paulhus has a neat paper on the way in which self-deception and impression management influence test responses, impression management being deliberate dissimulation which is designed to impress. As he points out self-deception is intertwined with a number of personality dimensions. If it were separated out these could lose some of their predictive power. Impression management, on the other hand, is the curse of the personality test user, especially in the field of selection, so that an ability to measure this and if possible to control for it would be extremely valuable. The paper by Hofstee and Smid demonstrates that complex methods of scoring questionnaires including the use of moderating variables add nothing to the validity of the results. This paper was extremely pleasing to me as I have always argued that if there are important factors underlying item variance they will emerge although systematic item errors must be avoided. It should be pointed out that such flaws can always be recognised if attempts are made to identify factors experimentally or by locating them in factor space or by relating them to external criteria rather than relying on item loadings. Finally in this section, Helfrich discusses linguistic variables-negation, the use of the passive voice and the use of indefinite terms such as ‘some’ or ‘many’ as well as deep and surface structures-and their influence on understanding items. Again this chapter should be useful for the test constructor. The last section consists of two papers on convergent and discriminant validity by Schwarzer and by Rudinger and Dommel. Both these are concerned with the multitrait-multimethod approach, using the structural equations method 595
596
SPECIAL REVIEW
via Lisrel and confirmatory factor analysis. I was not familiar with this work and found these chapters excellent guides and introductions. There are statistical difficulties with confirmatory analysis, notably that the chi-square test is not good at discriminating between hypotheses, and given the large sample sizes needed for factor analyses the practical problems involved in these methods may be overwhelming. This difficulty was highlighted by the fact that one of the examples in the chapter was thus flawed, with an n of only 35. In the epilogue to this book Wiggins claims that the issues in the present volume are so complex and specialised that the pioneers of personality measurement would not understand them. He further argues that it is difficult to say where we are going but that it is reassuring to note our relative position. There is no doubt about the formidable complexity of some of this book, well explicated though it is. Nor is there any doubt about its specialised nature. This is the one slight misgiving that I have about this book. If one is interested in personality measurement as a method of investigating personality then many of these chapters seem far removed from this purpose. The measurement itself has become an end. That is why Wiggins’ final words are important: are tests constructed with such psychometric sophistication actually more powerful scientific instruments than their predecessors? I am by no means certain that this is the case. However, this is a personal opinion of a psychometrist who has preferred psychological meaning to technical brilliance. As a guide to modern work in personality assessment, except for its lack of a chapter on modern factor analytic work, which is regarded as old-fashioned, it can be thoroughly recommended. PAUL
KLINE