chapter 2 - personality research methods

WFU PSY-255

funders second law

there are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues, and clues are always ambiguous

s-data (self judgements)

ratings that people provide of their own personality attributes or behavior

face validity

the degree to which an assessment instrument on its face appears to measure what its intended to measure

self-verification

the process by which people try to bring others to treat them inn a manner that confirms their self-conceptions

i-data (informants data)

judgements made by knowledgeable informants about general attributes of an individuals personality

judgements

data that derive, in the final analysis, from someone using his or her common sense and observations to rate personality or behavior

expectancy effect

the tendency for someone to become the kind of person others expect them to be; also know as self fulfilling prophecy and behavioral confirmation

L-data (life data)

more-or-less easily verifiable, concrete, real-life outcomes, which are of possible psychological significance

b-data (behavioral data)

direct observations of another’s behavior that are translated directly or nearly directly into numerical form; can be gathered in natural or contrived (experimental) settings

reliability

in measurement, the tendency of an instrument to provide the same comparative information on repeated occasions

measurement error

the variation of a number around its true mean due to uncontrolled, essentially random influences; also called error variance

state

a temporary psychological event, such as an emotion, thought, or perception

trait

a relatively stable and long-lasting attribute of personality

aggregation

the combining together of different measurements, such as by averaging them

spearman-brown formula

in psychometrics, a mathematical formula that predicts the degree to which the reliability of a test can be improved by adding more items

psychometrics

the technology of psychological measurement

validity

the degree to which a measurement actually reflects what it is intended to measure

construct

an idea about a psychological attribute that goes beyond what might be assessed through any particular method of assessment

construct

an idea about a psychological attribute that goes beyond what might be assessed through any particular method of assessment

construct validation

the strategy of establishing the validity of a measure by comparing it with a wide range of other measures

generalizability

the degree to which a measurement can be found under diverse circumstances, such as time, context, participant population, and so on; includes both reliability and validity

case method

studying a particular phenomenon or individual in depth both to understand the particular case and to discover general lessons or scientific laws

experimental method

a research technique that establishes the casual relationship between an independent variable (x) and dependent variable (y) by randomly assigning participants to experimental groups characterized by differing levels of x, and measuring the average behavior (y) that results in each group

correlational method

a research technique that establishes the relationship between two variables by measuring both variables in a sample of participants

scatter plot

a diagram that shows the relationship between two variables by displaying points on a two-dimensional plot

correlation coefficient

a number between -1 and +1 that reflects the degree to which one variable is a linear function of another

research

exploration of the unknown; finding out something that nobody knew before one discovered it