Personality assessment refers to ________.
a treatment for personality disorders
the analysis and interpretation of genetic markers of personality
the measurement of any characteristic pattern of behavior, thought, or emotion
the selection of a group of individuals with the most unique temperaments
Personality assessment would be relevant to which of the following constructs?
attitudes toward political leaders
extraversion
aggression
all of the above
What term refers to personality inventories that are designed to measure a wide range of traits?
big bandwidth inventories
high-fidelity inventories
omnibus inventories
Big Seven inventories
The California Psychological Inventory (CPI) was designed to ________.
assess individuals with psychological disorders
assess normal individuals
identify the Big Five personality factors
assess Jung’s psychological types
What does the acronym MMPI stand for?
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
Minnesota Multiple Personality Inventory
Michigan Major Personality Inventory
Michigan Multiple Personality Inventory
The MMPI was designed to ________.
Although Funder draws a distinction between S and B data, the distinction between ________ tests is also discussed in the text.
clinical and nonclinical
projective and objective
quantitative and qualitative
subjective and objective
Recent research using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to study shyness indicates that ________.
“controlled” aspects of shyness can be predicted using S data, but uncontrolled or spontaneous aspects can be more accurately predicted using B data
“controlled” aspects of shyness can be predicted using B data, but uncontrolled or spontaneous aspects are more accurately predicted based on S data
S data were unrelated to any aspects of shy behavior, but B data predicted many facets of shy behavior
B data were unrelated to any aspects of shy behavior, but S data predicted many facets of shy behavior
An IQ test yields what kind of data?
B
I
L
S
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) yields what kind of data?
Your responses to the personality test item “I am an intelligent person” would be ________ data, whereas your score on an intelligence test that reflects the number of problems you got right would be ________ data.
B; L
S; L
I; B
S; B
A projective test yields ________ data.
According to the text, one of the nonpsychometric functions of projective tests is to ________.
diagnose psychiatric disorders
increase the billable hours of clinical psychologists
break the ice between client and therapist
reduce countertransference between client and therapist
As described in the text, according to some motivation researchers, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) measures ________, whereas questionnaire-based measures predict ________.
what people want; actual performance
what people need; what people want
what people want; how motives are expressed
how motives are expressed; actual performance
According to the text, which projective test appears to have produced evidence that comes close to establishing its validity?
Draw-A-Person Test
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Buss-Perry Aggression Q-Sort
Draw-A-Face Test
What is the name of the newer, shorter version of the TAT?
Q-Sort Card Projection
Picture Sort Test
TAT-RTAT-R
Picture Story Exercise
A psychologist administering the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) asks respondents to ________.
draw a person so that the psychologist may determine which parts are left out or exaggerated
describe their current level of hostility so that the psychologist can measure their type A tendencies
tell stories about pictures that the psychologist shows them
describe their perceptions of the causes of people’s behavior so that the psychologist can measure attributional complexity
All projective tests ________.
involve stimuli with no clear meaning
involve the construction of stories and narratives
require choosing among multiple, predetermined alternatives
rely on computer scoring methods
If you were shown an inkblot and asked to describe what you saw, you would be taking the ________.
MMPI
CPI
Rorschach test
Thematic Apperception Test
When evaluated as psychometric instruments, most projective tests ________.
do not fare very well
have validity but little reliability
have generalizability but little validity
do as well as objective tests like the CPI and MMPI
Which of the following is a limitation of projective tests?
Clinicians tend to find them relatively unhelpful despite their considerable validity.
Projective tests are relatively inefficient and expensive to administer.
Although projective tests discriminate between known groups, the content of the items may seem absurd to test takers.
Respondents uniformly hate taking projective tests because of their length.
If a test consists of a list of True/False questions and is graded using a computer-scored answer sheet, then it is a(n) ________.
projective test
Q-sort
objective test
commonality scale
The reason that objective tests include so many items is to increase the ________ of the test.
criterion-related validity
reliability
content validity
construct validity
The improvement in reliability gained by adding additional “good” test items can be precisely calculated using the ________ formula.
Pearson Product Moment
alpha
Tucker-Lewis
Spearman-Brown
Which of the following is an objective test?
TAT
Rorschach inkblots
Increasing the number of items on a test makes it a better instrument according to which principle?
construct validation
operational definition
aggregation
incremental validation
Which objective personality scale could be used to identify individuals who cannot read text?
the F scale
the MMPI Lie scale
the PPI Illiterate Responder scale
the CPI Commonality scale
If everybody read, interpreted, and answered an item in exactly the same way, then that item ________.
would not be very useful for the assessment of individual differences
would be very informative about personality
was developed using the rational method of test construction
is empirically derived
The basis of the ________ method of test construction is to come up with items that seem directly, obviously, and logically related to what it is you wish to measure.
rational
empirical
philosophical
factor analytic
What is the most common method of test construction?
a combination of factor analytic and empirical methods
According to the text, the last step in a factor analysis is to ________.
calculate correlation coefficients between all item pairs
administer the items to a new sample
find new criterion groups
name the factors
The factor analytic technique of test construction is designed to________.
identify individuals who are attempting to lie or sabotage a test
identify groups of test items that seem to be alike
identify items that mean the same thing to the respondent as they do to the researcher
create projective tests
What is the first step in the empirical method of scale construction?
Gather lots of items.
Identify the groups.
Administer items to a large sample.
Conduct a factor analysis on existing scales.
The primary criterion for item selection in the empirical method of test construction is determining whether the item ________.
makes the scale more reliable
discriminates between two known groups
loads highly on its primary factor
will be challenged in a legal context
A test created using the empirical method yields what kind of data?
The Woodworth Personality Data Sheet was designed to measure psychiatric problems in what group?
college students
U.S. Army recruits
potential employees of Target stores
high school students
The approach to personality test construction that examines a set of correlations among many items in order to identify which items are highly correlated is called the ________ approach.
nomothetic
idiographic
Factor analysis can ________.
give psychological meaning to groups of traits
unquestionably determine the basic dimensions of personality
identify groups of items that go together
tell which items best differentiate normal and abnormal populations
The sole basis on which items are selected for empirically derived personality scales is whether ________.
their content adequately reflects the construct to be measured
they are correlated with other items on the scales
the respondent will be willing and able to give an accurate self-assessment for them
they are answered differently by different kinds of people
Dr. Akita is designing a test to measure sociability. She writes items that seem directly and obviously related to sociability, such as “I like to go to parties” and “I enjoy the company of other people.” Dr. Akita is using the ________ method of test construction.
projective
Imagine that you want to develop a test to measure depression. You gather a set of 100 potential test items and ask a sample of people diagnosed with clinical depression and a sample of nondepressed people to respond to the items. For your final version of the test, you decide to keep only the 15 items that the depressed and nondepressed groups answered differently. You are using a(n) ________ method of test construction.
If you were to fully develop a personality test without even looking at the item content, you would be using the ________ method of test construction.
A test created using the rational method yields what kind of data?
The ________ method is NOT a basic method for constructing objective personality tests.
consensus validation
According to the text, which of the following is NOT one of the conditions that must hold for an S data personality test to accurately measure an attribute of personality?
The test taker must be able to make an accurate self-assessment.
All of the items must be valid indicators of the construct.
The test taker must be willing to report the self-assessment accurately.
The test must contain both positively and negatively worded items.
According to the text, what is the best approach to test construction?
the rational method
the factor analytic method
the empirical method
a combination of all three approaches
Which of the following approaches to test construction is the most atheoretical?
content validation
Which of the following is NOT a major limitation of the factor analytic approach?
Usually the factors that emerge do not make sense in even well designed research.
The results are only as good as the items that are included in the analysis.
The factors are only as good as the criterion groups used to validate the measure.
It is up to psychologists to label the factors.
Faking responses in order to influence test results is most difficult on ________ constructed tests.
factor analytically
empirically
rationally
nomothetically
Inventories derived from the empirical method sometimes have items that seem strange or even objectionable to test takers ________.
in order to catch test takers who are faking responses
because those items correlated with outcomes of interest to the test developers
to identify test takers who are prudish and close-minded
because those items seemed the most content-valid to the test developers
Which of the following statements does NOT apply to rationally constructed personality scales?
The items must all be face-valid indicators of what the tester is trying to measure.
The person who completes the form must be able and willing to report an accurate selfassessment.
Each item must mean the same thing to the person who fills out the form as it did to the psychologist who wrote it.
Items are selected with the aid of statistical analyses such as item response theory (IRT).
Currently, the consensus among most personality researchers is that there are ________ fundamental personality traits.
3
5
7
16
The Big Five ________.
are the five key steps in the process of factor analysis
are steps in the construction of rational tests
factor analytically derived dimensions of personality
are the primary methods of test construction used by personality psychologists
Which of the following is NOT one of the Big Five?
psychoticism
conscientiousness
neuroticism
agreeableness
If a psychologist describes a research result as statistically significant, what does he or she typically mean?
The result is important.
The result is large and dramatic.
The result is unlikely to have occurred by chance.
The result will likely revolutionize the field.
A researcher wants to conduct a significance test for the correlation between extraversion and happiness. What is the null hypothesis in this analysis?
Extraversion is positively correlated with happiness.
Extraversion is negatively correlated with happiness.
Extraversion is the same construct as happiness.
Extraversion is uncorrelated with happiness.
What is the correct definition of the p-value?
probability that the null hypothesis is true
probability that the null hypothesis is false
probability that the observed result occurred by chance given that the null hypothesis is true
probability that the observed result occurred by chance given that the null hypothesis is false
Imagine that a researcher conducts a study and finds a statistically significant correlation between eating pizza and aggression. However, there is no real association between eating pizza and aggression in the population. What kind of error has this researcher made?
Type I
Type II
Type III
correlational
Imagine that a researcher conducts a study and fails to find a statistically significant correlation between exercise and weight loss. However, there is a real association between exercise and weight loss in the population. What kind of error has this researcher made?
Which of the following is NOT one of the concerns associated with the practice of null-hypothesis significance testing?
A statistically significant result is not necessarily important or meaningful.
The smaller the sample size, the easier it is to find a significant effect.
The criterion for a significant result (p < .05) is arbitrary.
The p-value is easy to interpret and its logic is easy to describe.
The number between –1 and +1 that indexes the linear association between any two variables is called ________.
the significance level
the probability value
the alpha level
the correlation coefficient
The Binomial Effect Size Display is a method for illustrating the size of ________.
reliability coefficients
validity coefficients
correlation coefficients
p-values
A researcher computes a correlation coefficient between variables X and Y using a handheld calculator. Which of the following values would automatically tell the researcher that he or she made a mistake?
2.50
0.75
0
–0.98
Imagine that you could draw a flat horizontal line through the points on a scatter plot depicting the relation between X and Y. Which of the following is the closest value to the correlation coefficient that you would compute from these data?
–1.0
–0.5
1.0
Imagine that you could draw a line through the points on a scatter plot depicting the relation between X and Y that slopes upward from left to right. Which of the following is a possible value for the correlation coefficient that you would compute from these data?
Which of the following is good practice for interpreting a correlation?
finding a method that demonstrates the size of the correlation in a concrete manner
evaluating whether it is statistically significant at the p < .05 level
simply looking at the sign of the correlation and ignoring the actual value
squaring the value, so that you can interpret the value more easily
Using the Binomial Effect Size Display, if there is a correlation of .30 between drinking alcohol and the likelihood of having a car accident, then out of 100 people who have been drinking, you would expect ________ of them to have an accident.
100
45
90
65
Assume that you are studying 200 participants, all of whom are sick. An experimental drug is given to 100 of them; the other 100 are given nothing. If the correlation between taking the drug and living is . 26, then ________ percent of those who got the drug would still be alive at the end of the study.
13
63
26
52
Integrity tests administered in employment screening provide good measures of ________.
intelligence
drug use on the job
sociability
Eliminating the use of personality tests in employment screening will ________.
prevent biases from affecting hiring decisions
decrease the likelihood that women and minorities will be discriminated against in hiring
increase the use of lie detector tests and drug tests in employment screening
not prevent traits from being judged but will change the ways traits are judged
One objection to the use of vocational interest tests is that these tests ________.
measure conscientiousness rather than vocational interest
may discourage women or minority group members from joining certain fields
measure performance ability rather than job interest
can be used to tell individuals what kind of occupational group they most resemble
Which of the following is an ethical issue involved in the research process?
how research findings are used
which research topics are studied
how truthful researchers are when describing their work
Which of the following is the biggest concern that Funder has about the use of deception in psychological research?
Most experiments that involve deception cause too much harm to participants.
Most experiments that involve deception are too silly to warrant such an extreme method.
The use of deception may harm the credibility of psychology and psychological researchers.
None of the above; Funder has few concerns about the use of deception in research.
Which of the following is NOT a typical argument used to justify deception in psychological research?
Participants have given informed consent and can withdraw their data if they are upset.
The use of deception actually educates participants about ethical concerns in research.
The deception typically does not harm participants.
Some topics can only be studied using deception.
