Chapter 2

Assessment and Methods

Essay Questions

1. What parts of your personality would be difficult to capture with a self-report

questionnaire? Would any of the alternative methods do a better job?

Honesty is one part of the personality that might be difficult to capture with a self-report
questionnaire since a respondent would answer more socially acceptable responses. Some
people may be embarrassed to provide truthful answers when filling in a self-report questionnaire.
The most common way for people to lie on questionnaires is to make themselves look better than
who they actually are, which is called socially desirable responding. Even when people know their
responses are anonymous, they might exaggerate their good qualities and downplay their bad
ones.

2. Why is it important for personality scales to be reliable and valid? What would
happen if researchers, individuals, and businesses relied on scales that were not
reliable and valid?

It is important for the personality scale to be reliable and valid because if a measure isn’t
consistent (low reliability) or doesn’t measure what it should (low validity), the pursuit of
knowledge is over before it begins. In contrast, a reliable and valid measure can be used
repeatedly to identify how those with certain personality traits behave and react. The power of a
good personality assessment is to help us understand ourselves and others. If researchers,
individuals, and businesses relied on scales that were not reliable and valid there won’t be any
confidence in the findings or results of the study or assessment. If these scales were not reliable
and valid then personality cannot be measured accurately. Understanding more about reliability
and validity will help anyone be a smarter user of these tests and evaluate whether the scores
from them mean anything.
3. A researcher finds a correlation between going to religious services and better
health. What are the three possibilities for causation in that study? What are some
possible third or confounding variables?

These are three possibilities for the causation of the correlation between going to religious
services and better health. In variable A we could say that “better health ensures that people are
going to religious services.” While in variable B we can state that “going to religious services
makes one’s health better.”

A possible third or confounding variable (C) that we could use for this is: Having strong
faith. In this scenario, having strong faith can be a reason for better health and a reason why
people go to religious services.

Going to
religious Better health
services

Having strong
faith