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Browsing Oregon Research Institute by Subject "individual differences, psychological assessment, comparative validity, peer-rating"
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Item Open Access The Comparative Validity of Questionnaire Data (16PF Scales) and Objective Test Data (O-A Battery) in Predicting Five Peer-Rating Criteria: A Brief Report, No. 1(Oregon Research Institute, 1972-02) Norman, Warren T.; Schwartz, Edward; Goldberg, Lewis R.Individual differences can be assessed in at least three different media, namely via Life (L) data, Questionnaire (Q) data, or Objective Test (T) data (see Cattell , 1957). The distinction between L-data and Q or T-data is reasonably clear : L- data refers to behavior in situ- -within the ongoing stream of life--while both Q- and T-data are constrained by experimental stimulation or laboratory control . Within the traditional psychometric paradigm, L-data is often assigned the critical role of the dependent variable or the criterion behavior which psychologists seek to predict, and these predictions are typically generated from measures based on either questionnaire or test data. While the field of psychological assessment has become heavily saturated with personality questionnaires and inventories (see Goldberg , 1971) , Cattell has consistently exhorted psychometricians to eschew Q-data and to concentrate on the development of objective personality tests . To this end , Cattell and his associates have constructed a multitude of such tests over the years and have included these measures, plus many devised by other investigators , in a series of factorial studies (see Cattell , 1957; Cattell & Warburton , 1967; Hundleby, Pawlik , & Cattell, 1965 ) . The explicit rationale for this research strategy is the assumption that objective tests eliminate many of the biases which presumably distort questionnaire responses (e .g . , response sets and styles), and consequently that such tests will ultimately provide the most valid measures of important personality traits . By 1955, Cattell had assembled a battery of objective tests, called the Objective- Analytic (0-A) Eighteen Factor Personality Test Battery, which was distributed by the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing (IPAT) as a preliminary research kit . This initial battery was probably not widely disseminated; perhaps because of its limited availability and the relatively high cost of using objective tests as compared to questionnaires, there have been very few reports of studies by investigators outside Cattell 's laboratory comparing the validities of these objective tests with those obtained from questionnaire scales. The present report summarizes the results of one such preliminary comparison . This report, which is not intended for formal publication, is based upon data collected over a decade ago, from a sample of 82 male subjects who were administered a version of the 0-A Battery which included 30 different tests and which yielded 57 different test scores . At the present time, the number of tests cataloged by Cattell and Warburton (1967) numbers over 400 , yielding well over 2 , 000 test scores . Consequently , the results presented in this report must be understood as limited to only a small subset of the total set of objective tests currently available .