Principles of psychology in nursing : Assessment of personality

Assessment of personality:

The oldest methods of measuring personality are

            Astrology,

            Palmistry,

Phrenology etc.

More scientific techniques have been evolved to measure personality, which is very helpful in the field of education, employment and medicine.

In the field of education , to provide suitable courses , in the field of employment to select suitable person as per the requirements of a job and in the field of medicine to diagnose the mental diseases of patients for giving proper treatments.

Some of them are

            Observation

            Case Study

            Rating Scale

            Questionnaire

            Interview

            Projective techniques

1-Observation:

There are two types of observation

            Participant

            non-participant

To make observation more effective the observation can make use of tape recorders. Cameras and binoculars. Carefully intelligent and scientific observation is needed in observation method.

2-Case study:

P.V.Young says case study is a method of exploring and analyzing the life of a social unit be that a person, a family an institution cultural group or even entire community.

Characteristics of good case study

            Adequacy

            Validity

            Continuity

            Confidentiality

            Feed back

Steps in Case Study:

            Initial status

            Collection of exploratory data

            Diognosis of causal factors

            Looking forward to remedial development.

            Follow up process.

3- Rating scale:

Rating scale is used to quantify an observation. In this method a number of questions are asked to enable a person to rate himself or to enable others to do so. Teacher can use rating scales to categorize their students on a specific trait. Example for self-rating

2) In spite of faulty logic error , central tendency error and generosity error, it is used for rating students well in scholarship and the quality or leadership sincerity punctuality and honesty.

4. Questionnaire:

It is most popular method useful in collecting quantitative and qualitative information.

A questionnaire should collect information which is normally not available from others sources . It should be arranged in categories to ensure accurate responses. It should provide complete and clear direction, simplicity, familiarity, singularity, should be used.

The questionnaire should avoid questions of ambiguity, variety it should not be too lengthy. It should be printed Both the

methods of mailing and personal contact of administering the questionnaire have their own advantages and disadvantages.

5 Interview:

Interview is a technique of getting information directly from the subject. It is subjective in nature hence its findings should be supplemented with other methods.

6. Projective techniques:

Projective techniques are used to study the unconscious aspect of behaviour , it permits or encourages wide variety of responses and it is highly multidimensional .

Drever defines, a projective technique is interpretations of situations and events by reading into them their own experiences and feelings.

A Projective techniques is used for

            Clinical settings for digonostic use with the mental patients

            important projective tests are Rorschach ink blot test

            The maticc apperception test

            the world association test

            sentence completion test.

Rorschach ink blot test: is made up of ten ink blot patterns. 5 are in black and white, two are black and red and 3 are multicolored.

While administering the test encouragements is given when there is no response from the individual.

All the responses are taken down verbatim. It does not impose time limits. The scoring categories are named as

            Location

            Content

            Timing

            Determinants

            Originality.

Thematic Apperception test developed Murray and Morgan consists of 30 pictures which portray human beings in a variety of actual life situations and 1 black card 10 for male, 10 for female and 10 for both. The maximum number of pictures used with any subject is 20.

The system of scoring taken into account of the following.

            Hero of the story

            Needs and conflicts of the hero

            Theme of story: the global view should be based upon, the responses of all the 20 pictures shown to the subject and the experiences of the examiner.

Word assiciation test are of two types

            Controlled

            Uncontrolled

In controlled word association, the subject is given the word and is asked to give the antonym or synonym.

In uncontrolled word association, the subject is given a word and asked to reply and the first word that comes to his mind spontaneously is taken into account .

The interpretation of the tests depends on two factors (i.e.) the response word and reaction time. Inability to make any response or mere repetition of the stimulus word indicates one' s emotional blocking.

Sentence completion tests consists of a list of incomplete sentences, generally open at the end and requires completion by the subject who is asked to go through the list and answer as quickly as possible.

On the basis of these responses, the psychologist' s records observation, which indicate unhealthy or conflicting, healthy or positive attitude etc. Stimulus in the form of the following words may be represented.

            I wish to become---------

            My Mother----------

(3) My Teacher-----------

The above-mentioned incomplete sentences can be completed in many ways. From these answers, we can assess the personality of an individual.