Introduction to Typical Performance Tests

Most typical Performance Tests measure traits.

• Traits are intercorrelated clusters of thoughts, feelings, and behavior presumed to remain relatively stable across time and situations.
• Traits are usually construed as dimensions, continuous attributes which can be used to rate or rank individuals. Traits are continuous and everyone can be ranked somewhere on the continuum. A collection of traits are how personality is typically characterized.
• Walter Mischel and other have questioned whether traits are largely an illusion.
• His argument focused on the lack of stability in behavior across time and situations. The truth is that people are not as consistent as we may think.
• Mischel notes that people may erroneously assume traits are real because we tend to see most people in a limited range of situations, hence we attribute the consistency in their behavior to them, never realizing how much they vary in different contexts.
• Mischel further notes that people are much less comfortable describing themselves or those they now well in trait terms, probably because familiarity includes knowledge of inconsistent behavior over time and place.
• In any event, trait measures are generally poor predictors of specific behavior in a particular situation (better measures are past behavior in a similar situation, or people's predictions of how they would behave in a specific context).
• His criticism has significantly affected the way we describe people. We now describe traits in situation-specific ways.
• His argument is weaker with regards to predictive power of trait measurements. If we take a number of tests to determine a trait we can better predict relative probabilities of behavior.
• Most measurement assumes a nomothetic, normative model of personality
• Nomothetic models of personality involves the assumption that we can explain individuals, and individual differences, by comparing people on a limited set of predefined attributes. All attributes (usually traits) would be presumed to apply to everyone. The difference between people would be their levels in each dimension. People are seen as a collection of these traits. Mot traditional tests assume a nomothetic model.
• In contrast, an ideographic approach to personality assumes different dimensions might be relevant for different people--from a third person perspective. For example, competitiveness, intelligence conformity, tidiness, and traditional moral values might be keys to understanding your, but tell us little of importance about your roommate.
• Traditional tests also assess an individual's standing on each trait by comparing him or her to norms for others on that trait. An alternative (ipsative) model might compare one person's standing on each dimension with their position on other dimensions (not is she aggressive or curious, but how aggressive is she relative to her curiosity). This focuses on a comparison between the traits.

Scoring Keys

• Scoring Keys are procedures for assigning numbers to answers. There are three basic strategies for keying:
1. LOGICAL KEYING: Scoring is based on the apparent meaning of items. Keying is guided by theory of what item should measure. Sometimes keying is based just on face validity; other logical keys are also based on statistical evidence of item meanings.
2. EMPIRICAL KEYING: this is based purely on the correlates and can be entirely atheoretical. Items are scored based on solely statistical associations with other variables. The meaning isn't important. (E.g., a question like, Do you believe in the second coming of Christ?) What matters is that answers to the item correlated with what the scale is trying to measure. For instance, those of a particular professional might answer a certain way to certain questions which are not directly related to the profession. And how you compare to the professionals might clue you in on whether you would be happy in the profession.
3. HOMOGENEOUS KEYING: This assumes items for a scales should be highly intercorrelated. Thus, items for a key are chosen by their association with other items for that key. The goal is to maximize the internal consistency of the scale. Homogeneous scaling facilitates interpretation
• These procedures are not mutually exclusive. Usually, though, one or two predominate for a particular scale.

The Strong Interest Inventory (SII) is

• a measure of career related interests not abilities--although they often go together.
• widely used in career guidance (and has been for 50 years).

• Occupational Scales
• Basic Interest Scales
• General Occupational Themes (general occupational areas)
• Adminstrative Indicies (checks for highly unusual responses, lots of blank answers
• Main Uses: Educational and occupational counseling, academic advising
• There are six general themes (Realistic, conventional, enterprising, investigative, artistic, social) The idea is to find the personality types. And the occupations that they have should match their basic interests.

• empirically keyed, designed to discriminate between MIG/WIG (Men in General/Women in General) vs. people in specific occupations
• Those in the occupation had been on the job for at least three years, reported satisfaction, had typical roles for people in the job, and appeared at least minimally successful.
• Scores are T sores, normed against those in the particular occupation (not MIG/WIG)
• Useful in predicting which occupations people enter, whether they will be content.

• Homogeneous keying, derived from factor analysis
• Normed against MIG/WIG (current sample is 300 men and 300 women; there are more in 1994 revision) and normed within the culture.
• Useful in identifying preferred involvements, topics, activities.

• Based on Holland's analysis of career interests, and careers, in terms of 6 broad dimensions.
• Theoretical, derived from homogeneous keying although purity sacrificed for generality.
• Useful in choosing broad life- and work-foci.
• To be careful when you look at your SII scores:
• A low score does not mean you should not do it. But you should make sure to see that it has what you are interested in.
• There might be occupations that you never even considered. You should look into the occupations you have never considered.

• If you have a score of average on the basic interest scale or General Occupational theme, you are average for your gender in that particular interest.
• If you are average on a specific Occupational Scale, you are average for people in that occupation (much more like those people than are MIG/WIG).