Personality and Projective tests: Conceptual and Practical Applications

Chapter 15: The 15FQ+ in South Africa

AUTHOR: N. Tredoux

ABSTRACT: This chapter will discuss the development of the 15FQ+ and how it differs from the 16PF, which measures the same model of personality. An overview of the questionnaire’s reliability and validity will be done, comparing early studies with newer results.  The effect of language proficiency, reasoning ability and education on the reliability of the questionnaire will be discussed.  Differences between race and language groups of the various scales will be considered, with a discussion of the importance of these differences for the fair use of the questionnaire in South Africa. An overview of South African norms will be presented. Guidelines for the choice of norm groups will be discussed, with particular emphasis on the decision whether to use a general population norm or a smaller norm which would be specific to a given language or race group.  For some assessment situations, the best choice may be to use a simpler questionnaire, or not to assess personality using a questionnaire at all.  Attention will also be given to differences between age groups on the personality dimensions measures by the 15FQ+. The various computer-generated reports available for the 15FQ+ will be considered, to facilitate their appropriate use.  Attention will be given to the practice of matching personality dimensions to competencies, the obtaining of matched scores, and the implications for fair use of the questionnaire. The importance of doing an integrated assessment will be emphasised, and some consideration will be given to additional sources of information that can be used to arrive at a fair and accurate assessment.

Read this Chapter

Chapter 23: Assessment and Monitoring of Symptoms in the Treatment of Psychological Problems

AUTHORS: D. Edwards, C. Young

ABSTRACT: This chapter considers the clinical application of brief symptom measures in South African contexts. Although typically developed in the USA and UK, these measures can assist South African clinicians to assess the severity of their clients’ presentations, to track the progress of psychological therapy from one session to the next and to evaluate therapy outcomes. There is evidence for their value not only for research but also for practice, as such systematic tracking of symptoms improves clinical outcome. While many competing measures have been developed over the years, a few dominate in the literature and even fewer have been used and at least partially validated in South Africa. This chapter summarizes recent local validation studies on the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation – Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), and of the Xhosa translations of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS).  Other disorder-specific measures that have been used in local contexts include the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and a number of trauma scales such as the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS), the Impact of Events Scale (IES), the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory, and the Traumatic Grief Inventory (TGI). The utility of these scales in everyday settings, and their interpretation in conjunction with other assessment data are examined by reference to clinical examples, including published case studies.  Problems encountered in the translation of scales as well as their use in local multicultural and multilingual contexts are discussed.

Read this Chapter

Chapter 14: The 16PF in South Africa

AUTHORS: N. Taylor, C. Prinsloo, R. van Eeden

ABSTRACT: Personality assessment and the general history of the development of the 16PF are briefly discussed. An overview of the history of the 16PF in South Africa is subsequently given including the development and psychometric properties of older versions of the questionnaire and of related questionnaires. This is followed by a detailed discussion of two versions of the questionnaire, namely the SA92 version and the SA fifth edition. Both versions are locally used and supported by test publishers (although the form SA92 is being phased out in favour of the SA fifth edition). The latter represents current local and international developments and the former is important in terms of the associated research results both from a practical and a methodological point of view. The versions are described in terms of their development and the subsequent research conducted in South Africa. The emphasis is on critical discussion/examination of the instruments in the local context, focusing on cross-cultural research. In addition to comparisons across groups, issues such as the understanding of items, the role of language proficiency and translation difficulties are discussed. Issues related to the 16PF in practice are discussed and the chapter concludes with ideas on the future of the questionnaire in South Africa. Reliability, validity and bias issues are highlighted as far as possible.

Read this Chapter

Read this Chapter

Chapter 21: The Millon Inventories in South Africa

AUTHORS: R. Patel, S. Laher

ABSTRACT: The Millon family of instruments consists of the MCMI-III, MIPS, MAHI,MBHI. This chapter will provide a brief history into their development touching on Millon’s theory of abnormal and normal personality development. Following this a brief description of each instrument will be provided. Since the MCMI-III is the most commonly used instrument both internationally and locally, this will receive more coverage in the chapter. Research on the MCMI-III in SA will be presented. Finally the MIPS was studied in the SA context and SA norms were developed for the instrument. These will also be included in the chapter.

Read this Chapter

Chapter 18: The NEO-PI-R in South Africa

AUTHOR: S. Laher

ABSTRACT: The NEO-PI-R is a widely used test both in assessment and research locally and internationally. Aside from being used in research and practice to assess personality, it is also amongst the most commonly used instruments to operationalise the FFM of personality. Thus this chapter intends providing a brief history of the development of the NEO-PI-R, followed by a brief description of the NEO-PI-R domain and facet scales. Following this research using the NEO-PI-R in the South African context will be presented. Finally the chapter will conclude with some discussion on the use of the NEO-PI-R in the SA context.

Read this Chapter