Personality Research Form

Douglas N. Jackson, Ph.D. © 1964, 1974, 1984, 1997

To this day the Personality Research Form (PRF), introduced in 1967, represents a major breakthrough in psychological testing. The PRF is one of the most highly cited psychological assessments, having been referenced over 1,500 times in research literature. The PRF has been used to study assertiveness training, consumer behavior, decision-making, emotional development, employee attitudes, job performance, leadership style, and risk-taking to name a few.

Applications

• Assessment of normal adult personality.
• Useful for personnel selection and in counseling settings.
• Research requiring a broad coverage of personality dimensions.

Description

Elaborate Test Construction

The PRF benefited from modern construct-oriented methods of personality scale construction, including extensive personality trait definitions, rigorous item selection, and suppression of desirability response bias. Unlike other personality measures that define personality narrowly, the PRF measures 22 unique aspects of personality, which are based on Murray's framework. The result is a highly reliable, extensively validated, comprehensive measure of normal personality.

Construction of the PRF entailed several innovations to promote psychometric fitness, including:

• Careful and rigorous formulation of a theoretically based definition of the traits to be assessed, based to a large extent on Murray's framework for the description of personality;
• Item selection on the basis of simplicity of wording, content saturation, and inter-scale independence through use of an algorithm for minimum redundancy item analysis;
• The use of sophisticated procedures to minimize susceptibility to social desirability response bias;
• Explicit consideration of convergent and discriminant validity throughout all stages of scale development.

PRF Scales Form E

• Abasement
• Achievement
• Affiliation
• Aggression
• Autonomy
• Change
• Cognitive Structure
• Defendence
• Desirability
• Dominance
• Endurance
• Exhibition
• Harmavoidance
• Impulsivity
• Infrequency
• Nurturance
• Order
• Play
• Sentience
• Social Recognition
• Succorance
• Understanding

Norms

Norms are based on separate samples of thousands of male and female North American college students. Norms are also available for adolescent and various adult populations including college students, psychiatric inpatients, and criminal offenders.

Reliability

Internal consistency reliabilities for the PRF have ranged between .50 and .91 (median = .70), and test-retest reliabilities have ranged between .80 and .96 (median = .91) for a two-week testing interval. All told, these values indicate appreciable reliability of PRF scale scores.

Validity

The PRF has been used in hundreds of studies in diverse settings involving measures of traits and/or behaviors conceptually related to PRF constructs. The PRF Manual describes many findings relevant to judgments of validity. Overall, independent research strongly supports the use of the PRF in providing accurate information about individuals' personality and typical patterns of behavior. In one study, for example, correlations between PRF scale scores and separate ratings of trait-relevant behaviors ranged from .16 to .64 (median = .27). Another study reports correlations between self- and roommate-ratings on the PRF constructs ranging from .27 to .74 (median = .53).

Hand Scoring

Materials required for hand scoring include a manual, one reusable test booklet, one hand scorable answer sheet, one profile sheet and one scoring template per respondent.

Mail-in Scoring

Two reports are available via the Mail-in Scoring service. The PRF Extended Report includes profiles for the 20 Form E personality scales as well as 8 Vocational Preference scales. Administrative indices and an interpretive paragraph making use of the Infrequency and Desirability scale results are useful in determining the validity of the PRF administration. Introductory text and scale descriptions make the PRF Extended Report easier for respondents to understand.

The PRF Basic Report consists of a profile for the 20 PRF-E personality scales, scale descriptions as well as administrative indices and a table of raw responses. Materials required include a manual as well as one reusable test booklet, one answer sheet and one scoring coupon for each respondent.

Software

Use our SigmaSoft PRF for Windows software to administer and score Form E of the PRF on your computer. The PRF for Windows software produces three (3) types of report. The Extended and Basic Reports are similar to those available from our Mail-in Scoring service. The Data Report presents the scores found in the Basic Report in a format designed for use by other programs. In addition to the software itself, you will need to purchase enough coupons to pay for each report you wish to produce.

Report Type	Coupons Required
Extended	6
Basic	3
Data	2

This software also makes it easy to input answers or scale scores from paper and pencil administrations. You may import data scanned by an optical mark reader by purchasing our SigmaSoft Scanning Utility and scannable answer sheets.

Internet

The Personality Research Form can also be completed at SigmaTesting.Com, our exciting online testing platform that allows you instant local and remote testing and administrative access to a full range of tests and test results.

Prices

Click here for detailed pricing information.