You don't always need a highly sophisticated personality test. Sometimes you just want to have fun or reflect a little on yourself. But at other times, you are faced with a particular challenge and are looking for a reliable test that will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your personality, so that you can better manage this difficulty or make an important decision. How can you assess the quality of a test? In a previous article, we showed that using different types of questions allows for a more sophisticated approach. In this article, we'll show you some other quality criteria.

How to evaluate the quality of a personality test?

If you're not an expert, it's hard to judge the value of a personality test. The number of questions is a good starting point. Tests with ten or twenty questions, such as those found in magazines, can never be considered scientific. They simply give you the opportunity to question part of your psyche, which is not a bad thing, as long as you do not expect highly reliable and accurate results.

So what are the relevant criteria for judging the value of a personality test?  

• Complexity: Some tests are based on a few simple categories. Others are more nuanced and include subcategories. Having more categories evaluated is generally positive, but does not necessarily mean that you are capturing more dimensions of the person. If we break down a human trait into numerous subcategories, we may miss the person as a whole, despite very detailed results. To meet the requirement for comprehensiveness, the test must provide you with a multidimensional view.
  
  
• Number of dimensions: By covering several dimensions (e.g., motives, temperament, sensitivity, etc.) at once, you obtain a more nuanced description of personality, provided that you ask enough relevant questions for each dimension, which obviously requires a sufficiently large number of questions to be able to draw useful conclusions.-
  
  
• Scientific background: There are tests based on vague ideas or very simple theories, such as the MBTI**, which was originally designed by two American women with no psychological training, inspired only by a book by Carl Jung. This type of test is never used by academic researchers in the field of psychology. In universities, you rely solely on scientific theories that have been confirmed by current research. We will devote a future blog post to this topic.
  
  
• Reliability and validity: In the scientific world, the validity and reliability of a test are crucial, although these aspects are not easy to assess outside of academia. Reliability reflects the extent to which research results can be reproduced when the research is repeated under the same conditions. Validity reflects the extent to which the results of a study measure what the study was intended to measure. In scientific research, extreme care is supposed to be taken with these two criteria. But if you don't work in the field of research, it is difficult to find, read, and check the details of a study. As a result, people normally rely instead on the reputation of the researchers or the institute, or on recommendations from colleagues.

Different views

Due to its complexity, some personality tests can give us more accurate results than others. It is equally important to check whether the questions asked are relevant, i.e., whether they actually provide the desired information. This refers to the validity we mentioned in the previous paragraph.  

• Your perception of yourself: When you fill out a standard questionnaire, your answers are based on your own perception of yourself. The test therefore captures only what you are aware of, and for this reason the results often confirm your perception of yourself. Sometimes you may discover new aspects because your answers are interpreted in a way you had never thought of before. But you cannot go beyond your own perception of yourself. We discussed this point in a previous article.
  
  
• Outside perspective: To avoid overlooking aspects you may not be aware of, you can ask your colleagues for feedback. Companies use the “360 degree assessment,” also known as “360 degree feedback,” for this purpose. In addition to the person’s self-assessment, it includes feedback from other people with whom an employee comes into contact, both inside and outside the company. This provides a fairly comprehensive picture of the person. It is a significant investment in terms of cost and time, but it should ensure that the company does not overlook an employee's potential.
  
  
• Hidden aspects: How can you get deeper and uncover aspects that neither you nor those around you suspect? In order to do this, you need to create opportunities that force you to express yourself freely and spontaneously, so that the first ideas that come to mind can be captured. Projective tests have been developed for this purpose. How do they work? You are shown images that allow for a huge number of interpretations. Then you are asked to spontaneously say or write down what is happening in the image, or to complete it with a pencil. This information is then analyzed by trained specialists in order to extract the relevant information.

In the past, the last approach was not necessarily taken seriously. But today, neuroscience makes it possible to easily explain this method. Every sensory impression (visual, in the case of an image) activates certain neural circuits in the brain. The ones activated first are the circuits that are the most often used and the best connected (as if there were highways in our brain). This effect is exploited in projective tests. It is assumed that the neural circuits that are immediately activated must be those that most influence our reactions and personality.

The difficulty lies in interpreting the responses. To comply with scientific standards, the interpretation of a projective test must be based on clearly defined and standardized practices and on people who are specifically trained for this task. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, which leads to a certain mistrust of these methods. Indeed, if the interpretation is not clearly standardized, the results cannot be reproduced and would therefore lack the reliability mentioned above.

Which personality test best suits your needs?

If you want to do a little introspection, a test based solely on your perception of yourself may suffice, as there is nothing important at stake. But it is a rather questionable method when personnel decisions depend heavily on it. For companies, a 360-degree assessment is very beneficial if they want to offer their employees the best career opportunities. As an individual, you can ask a number of different people in your circle how they perceive you. The problem is that some of the people you ask may not necessarily give you honest answers. But this could still be a good way to learn more about your strengths and weaknesses.

If you want to go deeper and understand hidden aspects of your personality, you will have to choose a different approach. You need a test that goes beyond multiple-choice answers. That's why we offer the PSI personality test, which includes your own perception of yourself, but also contains elements that allow for a more in-depth view. Nevertheless, it is based on solid scientific foundations, established by research conducted at the University of Osnabrück and elsewhere.

Find out more about the PSI personality test

You will find more information about the PSI personality test on the following page:

• Personality Exploration

Would you like to find out more? – Get in touch with us:

• Contact page

This article was first published in French in October 2023 and has now been translated into English by the author himself.

Author of the article: Beát Edelmann, expert in neurodiversity (autism, ADHD, and HPI) and personality exploration. He founded the Abundana Institute for Self-Management in Geneva, which offers coaching, training, and consulting services in French, English, and German.

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