Personality assessment can be subjective or objective; each approach has advantages and limitations.
Objective personality assessment yields quantifiable and measurable data that remains uninfluenced by the personality researcher's interpretation during the data collection phase, considering the research design fits the personality aspect of the study.
An example of this includes self-report questionnaires and other types of data gathered from biological measurements and structured observations and interviews. In contrast, subjective assessments require interpretation by experts and include methods directly oppositional to objective methods such as non-structured interviews, observations, projective tests and biological measurements (Friedman, H. S. & Schustack, M. W., 2016).
It is understood that the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to assessment are inherent to their methods. A principal advantage of objecting testing arises from the processes innate ability to vet the data for reliability and validity; scoring by researchers would not skew the data. The strength of subjective assessments stems from their inclusion of expert interpretations to understand the data collected. They might help uncover vitally relevant information to the research. While on the other hand, ideas can vary widely, are usually personalized and in some cases, can be in direct disagreement with each other. To minimize these types of weaknesses, ways such as the cooperative use of the two kinds of measurements and training of the observers increase interrater reliability.
As an example, social media allows for a new advantage to objective testing, making it relatively inexpensive to employ and score. The disadvantage to this method is the limitation to the ability to verify the survey takers identity and the researcher has to trust the participant with regards to demographical information, which may or may not be relevant to the personality aspect being studied.
If the personality psychologist is studying coping mechanisms, they would have participants provide information on a variety of topics such as anxiety, stress, depression, family, finances, and employment. Using only questionnaires could require some surveys to be utilized as each questionnaire could be for a specific topic such as stress versus depression. Participants may also feel discouraged by long questionnaires, and the answers would not be accurate towards the end.
This is in high contrast to subjective testing which incurs greater expenses to employ and is more time consuming; it also requires more naturalistic settings as opposed to a laboratory setting that an objective assessment may utilize.
Evaluations and assessments always boil down to their validity and reliability. In this context, reliability always refers to consistency. When we discuss familiar people, we frequently judge their dependability or reliability. A person who shows up for work consistently on time, every day, no matter the weather conditions or health is usually regarded as reliable. Validity refers to the accuracy of an assessment by measuring what it implies to measure, for example, if a thermostat is inaccurate it is not an accurate or valid measurement of the house's temperature.
The best assessment in any field are always valid and reliable, but they are also relevant. If not, they are less useful as tools in evaluating the phenomena being studied. As such, a researcher goes to great lengths to reduce these methods limitations. For example, test-retest reliability refers to the results of an assessment taken at different times and yielding similar results (Friedman, H. S. & Schustack, M. W., 2016). Internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability are both methods used to determine consistency and results (Creswell, 2009).
References
Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd Ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Friedman, H. S. & Schustack, M. W. (2016). Personality: Classic theories and modern research (6th ed.). MA: Pearson.
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