MEASUREMENT OF PERSONALITY (Self description tests) 

Whenever the psychologists talk about instruments of "measuring" personality, they separate out certain aspects or traits from a unified whole person, purely as a matter of convenience. These aspects or traits do not exist as separate entitles. They are only aspects of a ways of looking at the unitary person. However, it is inevitable that we do pick the person to pieces to study and understand him. We cannot look at everything at once. It will be convenient to define the terms to refer to certain segments or respective of personality that we may wish to measure or evaluate. These terms and the meaning attached to them are briefly given below:

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TEMPERAMENT refers to the individual's characteristic mood, activity level, excitability and focus of concern. It includes such dimensions as cheerful-gloomy, energetic-lethargic, excited - calm, introverted-extroverted, and dominant-submissive.

CHARACTER relates to those aspects of individual behavior to which a definite social value has been attached. Honesty, cooperatives, thrift, kindliness, and loyalty are all labels for social virtue.

ADJUSTMENT is a term used to indicate how well the individual has been able to make peace with himself and the world around him. In so far as the individual can comfortably accept himself and his world, in so far as his ways of life do not get him in trouble with his social group, he will be considered as well adjusted.

INTERESTS refer to the variety of choices the individual makes with respect to the activities in which he engages he show preference for some, aversion to others.

ATTITUDES relates to tendencies to accept or reject particular groups of individuals sets of ideas or social Institutions. For the purpose of selection in employment, emphasis is normally given on the measurement of "Temperament" and "Adjustment", though occasionally the "Interest" inventories are also used. Before we describe some of the commonly used personality tests, it is worthwhile to know what a person has to do to answer any such test or inventory adequately. Completing one of these tests usually requires that the respondent be:

a) able to read and understand the item

b) able to stand back and view his own behavior and to decide whether the statement is or is not true of him , and

c) willing to give frank and honest answers. Each of these points raises certain issues about the validity (and hence usefulness) of self respects tests. One problem in inventories of all types is that of reading load. This problem, is partly one of sheer amount of reading. The slow reader may have trouble getting through so much verbiage, or may start responding without really reading through the item. The problem is partly one of the level of reading i.e. of complexity of structure and abstractness of ideas involved. If the vocabulary or the concepts are beyond the respondents comprehension, he may again give up the attempt really to understand and may respond in superficial or random fashion.