Instructions
This exercise will allow you to apply your knowledge of personality theories and build your self-awareness by examining your own personality constructs. You are required to write a 2,000-word reflective piece framed within the relevant theories of personality. The assessment contains two parts:
Part 1: Theories of Personality (1000 words)
What distinguishes trait theory from other personality theories? Discuss similarities and/or differences in relation to at least two other theories. Remember to support your answer with evidence from the psychological literature.
Part 2: Reflective Activity (1000 words)
This exercise aims to build both your understanding of personality theory and to increase your self-awareness by requiring you to examine your own personality constructs.
For this reflective activity, you should carry out a personality test on yourself from the International Personality Item Pool. http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/
Using Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle, you should answer the following questions:
• Describe which tool you used and your experience of completing the tool (what happened?)
• How did you feel when undertaking the test and on receiving the outcome of the test? Did you understand all the questions that were being asked, was it user-friendly? (What were you thinking and feeling?)
• Evaluate your experience of completing a personality test. What was good and bad about it?
• Do you think it reflected your personality? Were the questions in line with theories of personality? Did you agree with the findings? Link this to your understanding of your personality traits revealed. (Making sense of this situation)
• What have you learned about your personality and how that could impact on your performance in meeting your goals? (Conclusion)
Preparation
“The scientist-practitioner model produces a psychologist who is uniquely educated and trained to generate and integrate scientific and professional knowledge, attitudes, and skills so as to further psychological science, the professional practice of psychology, and human welfare. The graduate of this training model is capable of functioning as an investigator and as a practitioner, and may function as either or both, consistent with the highest standards in psychology.” (Belar & Perry, 1992).
There are a number of competencies which characterize this model, one of which is that your expert qualities should not remain a mystery and that the ability to reflect on one’s actions it critical to engaging in a process of continuous learning.
Learning Outcomes:
Throughout this assignment you are expected to demonstrate evidence of your knowledge of the following learning outcomes:
• Demonstrate application of this knowledge through reflecting on your own personality constructs
• Present a theory-based analysis of a personality assessment
• To answer questions about human behaviour, psychologists develop questionnaires called psychometric tests. They then score people based on their responses to questions on these tests and use the results to prompt discussions with test-takers about their behavioural tendencies. A reliable measure that can predict human behaviour is a complex matter.
• Throughout this program of study, you will have been introduced to some concepts and terminology that will be new to you. The field of psychometrics and test construction has definitions that will be important for you to grasp as you progress into new modules. Learning about these sets of standards is important so that you can use your knowledge to evaluate the evidence for the tests that you go on to use as a student and eventually practitioner of psychology.
• One key term is reliability, which is the extent to which an assessment tool produces stable and consistent results. For example, if a candidate were to take a cognitive ability test and then sit the test again one week later, the results should be comparable (this assumes that nothing had happened in the previous week to impact on their cognitive function).
• Another key term is validity. This refers to how well a test measures what it is purported to measure. For example, a test of cognitive ability should tap just that and not, as we have seen early in this unit, the ability to read, write or hold a pencil. These ‘rules’ of test construction have a number of subtypes related to them and during this unit you will learn to understand both the basic terminology and the importance of each of the concepts to test development, construction and test choice.
• Have a basic understanding of the key concepts and principles related to good test construction;
• Understand the differences between reliability and validity.
• Recommended Reading:
• Maltby, J., Day, L., & Macaskill, A. (2017). Chapter 23: An Introduction to Psychometric Testing. In Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence (4th Edition) (pp. 627–668). Edinburgh: Pearson Education.
• The Personality Project. (2018). Personality Theory and Research.
• Jones, L. V., & Thissen, D. (2007). A History and Overview of Psychometrics. In C.R. Rao and S. Sinharay (Eds). Handbook of Statistics, 26: Psychometrics (pp.1-27). Amsterdan: North Holland.
• Bernstein, D., (2016). Chapter 2: Research in Psychology. In Psychology (10th Edition). Boston: Cengage Learning.
• McCrae, R. R., & John, O. P. (1992). An Introduction to the Five-Factor Model and its Applications. Journal Of Personality, 60(2), 175–215.
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