Personality Measures FAQ

1. What research has been done with the Personality Research Form?
2. How do your tests address the potential problems of faking and motivated distortion?
3. What is a Standard Score?

1. What research has been done with the Personality Research Form?

There are over 2000 articles and book chapters reporting research using the PRF. This research can be found using Psychlit or PsychInfo, both are psychological resources that provide abstracts and references for most major psychological publications. These search tools are available at most university libraries. There are listed also a number of references in the PRF Research Bibliography on this site.

2. How do your tests address the potential problems of faking and motivated distortion?

In general, most people responding to a personality questionnaire take it seriously and respond purposefully. In some circumstances however, deliberate distortion, passive noncompliance, and general carelessness in following instructions do occur. There are a variety of possible reasons for this. An individual may be rushed to complete the measure and answer items near the end of the test more or less at random. A respondent who feels coerced into the testing situation may display a lack of motivation by answering randomly. An individual may not understand written English well enough to follow directions and interpret items meaningfully. Simple carelessness is another possibility. A person may, for instance, confuse the item number in the booklet with a non-corresponding location on the answer sheet. It is appropriate to make provisions for these possibilities in interpreting the results of psychological instruments. Methods for detecting non-purposeful responding, based on responses to items from our measures are described in detail in the corresponding test manuals.

As well, all of our measures are designed to both detect and avoid faking and motivated distortion. Unlike many other personality measures, special item-selection procedures are used to suppress the social desirability component of each item, thereby reducing the opportunity for 'faking good' or 'faking bad'. SIGMA also serves the business community with specialized assessment techniques designed to overcome the faking that often occurs with job applicants.

3. What is a Standard Score?

A Standard Score is the respondent's score on a particular measure expressed in relation to the scores of the comparison group, commonly referred to as the normative sample. The most frequently used format for this purpose is a standard deviation distance above or below the group average.