Assessing Personality States: What to Consider when Constructing Personality State Measures

Repeated assessments of personality states in daily diary or experience sampling studies have become a more and more common tool in the psychologist's toolbox. However, and contrary to the widely available literature on personality traits, no best practices for the development of personality st...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of personality 2020-11, Vol.34 (6), p.1037-1059
Main Authors: Horstmann, Kai T., Ziegler, Matthias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
assessment
Best practice
Conscientiousness
Ecological momentary assessment
experience sampling
Personality
Personality development
Personality psychology
personality states
Personality tests
Personality traits
Psychological assessment
Reliability
validity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Repeated assessments of personality states in daily diary or experience sampling studies have become a more and more common tool in the psychologist's toolbox. However, and contrary to the widely available literature on personality traits, no best practices for the development of personality state measures exist, and personality state measures have been developed in many different ways. To address this, we first define what a personality state is and discuss important components. On the basis of this, we define what a personality state measure is and suggest a general guideline for the development of such measures. Following the ABC of test construction can then guide the strategy for obtaining validity and reliability evidence: (A) What is the construct being measured? (B) What is the intended purpose of the measure? And (C) What is the targeted population of persons and situations? We then conclude with an example by developing an initial item pool for the assessment of conscientiousness personality states. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology
ISSN:0890-2070
1099-0984
DOI:10.1002/per.2266