Assessment of Personality Development: Which Analysis When?

Abstract

The process of discovery is particularly exciting in the field of personality development. Anyone who works in this field learns not only about the phenomena at hand but about the self. Seldom, however, does theoretical work in this area spring from new discovery. It is more often rediscovery, gaining insight into what others may already know, but which one must discover for oneself. The primary thesis of my commentary is that the process of new theory construction in personality development requires the invention of new methods to assess personality. This necessity is acknowledged by Jane Loevinger, well-known for her no-nonsense, I'm from Missouri approach to personality assessment. However, these new methods may be distinct from those traditionally used to assess personality or its development. The secondary thesis is that these new methods go hand in hand with a broadened perspective on what constitutes theoretical and empirical validity in the field. It is tremendously exciting to read Loevinger's reflections on the process by which she and her colleagues discovered the theoretical distinction between polar and milestone variables in personality development and moved to an assessment method designed to quantify the latter. Herein lies an instructive tale of the connection between a theory of personality development and the methods its founder devised to refine and test these discoveries. Loevinger's structural account of how their theoretical framework evolved, the differentiation of data into conformist and conscientious levels, and the mediating of a self-aware level reads like a detective thriller. The amount of work that has gone into this developmental description should not to be underestimated. In my commentary on Loevinger's article Measurement of Personality: True or False, I raise two issues: The first is largely methodological, the second theoretical; but they are intricately related. I raise them largely in the context of what Loevinger says about qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. I do so not because I believe her claim to be false, but because I do not think her article goes as far or as deep as one can go at this time. The overarching theme of my commentary is that these issues require not an either-or but a which-when analysis-when to do which kinds of research, which kinds of data collection, and which kinds of data analyses. The Distinction Between Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to Personality Assessment