Quiz 1 Study Guide
Chapter 1
1. define personality and understand each of the elements of the definition of personality;
2. describe and provide examples of the three levels of personality analysis;
3. describe the fissure in the field of personality psychology
4. explain how contemporary personality research differ
5. describe and be familiar with the six domains of knowledge in personality psychology; and
6. discuss the three key purposes of scientific theories, and be able to distinguish theories from beliefs.
Chapter 2
1. describe and provide examples of the four sources of data collected by personality psychologists: Self-report data (S-data), Observer-reports data (O-Data), Test-data (T-data), and Life-outcome data (L-data)
2. identify the strengths and weaknesses of each source of personality data;
3. discuss how each source of data can provide information not provided by the other sources of data;
4. discuss the problems of selecting observers and of naturalistic versus artificial observations for O-data;
5. discuss the strengths and weaknesses of mechanical recording devices and physiological recording devices, and provide examples of each type of device for T-data;
6. discuss and provide examples of projective techniques, including identifying the strengths and weaknesses of these sources of data for T-data;
7. discuss the conditions under which one might expect links among different sources of data, and how the presence or absence of these links can be interpreted;
8. define reliability, including a discussion of test-retest reliability, inter-rater reliability, and internal consistency reliability;
9. define validity, including a discussion of face validity, predictive or criterion validity, convergent validity, discriminative validity, and construct validity;
10. define and discuss generalizability, including a discussion of the different “contexts” to which a measure might be generalizable;
11. describe and provide examples of the three types of research methods used by personality psychologists: experimental methods, correlational designs, and case studies.
12. identify the strengths and weaknesses of each type of research method;
13. identify and discuss when it might be appropriate to use one of the three research methods instead of the others; and
14. discuss how each type of research method can provide information not provided by the other research methods.