Introduction
The Personality Assessment Inventory test (PAI) is a clinical assessment test for adult persons for assessing their personality. Leslie Morey invented the test in the year 1990. It has been heralded as one of the greatest tests to be invented for the sake of personality assessment.
The PAI test, as is commonly referred to, is a clinical assessment test used by psychologists in the appraisal of a grown-up person’s qualities prior to a general psychoanalysis. It is viewed as a comprehensive test because it covers many constructs that relate to many mental disorders in humans. Although it qualifies as the best test ever, the personality assessment inventory analysis has both its strong and weak points.
Sources to be used to Criticize the PAI Test
To prove the above claim, the study will use journals published concerning the PAI system as the source of their critique of the system. Journals are one of the most authoritative publications in academic circles because of the thoroughness they give any work before accepting it for publication. In any case, before a researcher’s work is published, the work must meet certain standards that are acceptable in the research world. This approval can only be done through interrogation.
The writer will also go through the results of different PAI tests to establish their weaknesses and strengths in assessing psychoanalytically the mental situation of a patient. PAI reports as done by psychologists have details explaining the tests that have been performed and their results.
They indicate the findings that have been made by the test in all fields that have been tested by the psychologist. Thus, anyone with the relevant knowledge is able to analyze the tests and make a conclusion on the findings.
Critique of the Test
The Test is Comprehensive
The PAI test can be described as a very comprehensive test concerning human psychoanalysis because the components used in testing patients using the PAI tests are so broad that they cover almost all areas in mental disorders that are already known and thus need to be covered. The PAI test evaluates 344 items in the human personality that would give the mental position of an individual once they are tested.
This process can be described as comprehensive because the patient will have been evaluated on almost all known areas that need to be evaluated by the end of the test (Morey, 2000, p. 2). Among the 344 items that an individual requires to be tested on, 22 items do not overlap thus making it thorough in testing mental disorders.
Averagely, the test takes one hour to complete, which is an advantage because many psychometric tests take much more time than this while at the same time not being as comprehensive as this test. Therefore, this issue makes the test stand out as comprehensive concerning what has been covered and/or the time taken to cover it.
The advantages coming with comprehensiveness of the PAI system are that is has been made in such a way that it eliminates inconsistencies in the patients’ response because it tests the patient at different levels.
Therefore, it becomes reliable in the sense that it is capable of getting the right information while at the same time eliminating misleading information (Blaise et al., 2011, p. 23). The comprehensiveness of the PAI test model enables psychologists to apply it to any problem they wish to test as long as it has a mental bearing and hence a solution for many mental disorder tests.
The Test is Inclusive
The PAI test is usually administered to clients or patients while answering the questions the way they wish to answer them. This strategy enables patients to own the process of evaluating themselves when answering the questions.
Therefore, they tend to give honest answers. Self-administering of the questions eliminates instances of bias by the person administering the test because, when the patient gives out an answer, it is all that the psychologist will have to work with to come up with results (Douglas, 2001, p. 186).
There are instances when a person administering a test might feel that certain answers should be answered in a certain way. He or she might end up influencing the person being tested to answer according to the psychologist’s view. The PAI test has been prepared in such a way that a person with 4th grade reading skills can be able to use it without the need to be helped to do it.
The way questions have been structured in the questionnaire allows any individual with reading skills to read and understand what is required of them in answering the questions (Douglas, 2001, p. 186). The questionnaire has been formatted in a very simple-to-use manner that would allow even trained technicians to do an analysis of the findings in a very straightforward manner.
The PAI test can be restructured further to meet the needs of a specific population group by customizing it to fit the cultural practices of the groups as a way of coming up with relevant results that will answer questions from a particular group (Cheung, 1996, p. 182). This case however does not change the structure of the test and/or the purpose it is meant to achieve.
Adults and adolescents
The PAI testing system has been developed for both adult groups and adolescent groups. The main personality assessment instrument test is meant for persons of 18 years and above. The adolescent system known as PAI-A is meant for persons below 18years (Blaise et al., 2011, p. 15) because the different age groups portray different symptoms when it comes to mental disorders. The use of one system for both may distort the results.
Therefore, PAI comes out as a better system among many psychotherapy systems because it offers a customized system for different age groups. Just the same way the system can be customized to incorporate the culture of certain groups, the system has been made in a similar manner to serve specific age groups. The thought processes of different age groups matter. This assertion is also backed by the law in its treatment of people falling within the two age groups.
Adults will answer questions in a certain way concerning their understanding of the law because the law treats the two groups differently (Blaise et al., 2011, p. 15). On the other hand, adolescents as young people have challenges according to their ages. Thus, subjecting them to the adult test might be too much for them.
It is Reliable and Valid
The system has been hailed to be valid and reliable by many experts in the field of psychology and medicine due to its ability to bring out dependable results after testing. The reliability of PAI can be attributed to its applicability on almost all assessments that need to be done on patients and clients with different problems. The reliability of PAI is found in the tests and retests that have been done, which end up coming with the same result.
Consistencies are therefore used to point out the reliability of tests to determine whether they are valid or not. The validity of the PAI test is supported by logic validity in that the test is able to represent different facets that can be found in a social construct. This finding is important because it does not just purport to represent different facets at face value, which would mean face validity in the end.
Blaise et al. (2011, p.3) observe that the validity scales developed for use in the PAI testing system were meant to take care of any random responses that would have an effect on the interpretation of scales. The system was also meant to handle any negative and positive responding that may affect the interpretation of other scales in the chart.
Therefore, the elimination of any possible conflicting responses that may affect scales has made the system reliable because it takes care of responses that might warp the findings of the test. Reliability and validity of the PAI system can be found in the consistency of the high alpha coefficients that come with the full scale (Edward, Steiner & Walfish, 2010, p. 248).
The dependability of the test can also be found in the four-point graduated scale that the test allows an individual to answer from thus making the answers being provided more reliable because the responses are not restrictive to yes/no, which can be misleading in the end.
PAI as Self-Reporting
PAI test has been fashioned in such a way that it allows the patient to do a self-reporting of them, which can be misleading in different ways. The test is usually meant for testing mental disorders. Giving a patient the free hand to fill it out on their own can end up attracting wrong results, which can lead to misdiagnosis (Blaise et al., 2011, p. 34).
Although the test has been fashioned in a way that would eliminate inconsistencies, the test can easily fail if the patient is consistent in providing misleading information thus leading to wrong diagnosis. This case can happen to persons who understand how the test works. They can be described as pathological liars in that everything they say is consistent, although they are systematically inconsistent.
Self-reporting on the other hand can be confusing to some people who may not understand what the questions want. This deduction can be found in the four-point graduated scale that the respondent can choose from in answering the questions (Edward, Steiner & Wlafish, 2010, p.248) because it can be very difficult to choose between the four answers especially the two middle answers that allow one to give a partial response.
The reliability on patients to provide honest answers for the test can also be a challenge to the test because different patients will take different approaches depending on their understanding of the test. This case can make the test become skewed in a manner that not all the needed information will be captured, but just the information that has been found to be consistent. Thus, the test will be inadequate to some point if such inconsistencies make up the larger part of the test.
It does not Measure all Traits
The PAI test has been found to be inadequate in that it does not identify all traits that it might be needed to identify in psychotherapy. It has also been found not to measure all traits that it might be needed to determine. The PAI test does not measure such issues like eating disorders, which are part of mental disarray (Douglas, 2001, p. 185). This failure might therefore force a psychologist to apply other tests to fill this gap.
At the same time, the test cannot be relied upon, as the only form of test that should be used in the diagnosis. Thus, it cannot be used as the final test. It comes with a recommendation that no decisions should be made solely on the findings of the test and that other sources should be consulted as a way of coming up with the final recommendations (Douglas, 2001, p.186).
This issue therefore makes the test partly inadequate because it forms part of the many tests that can make conclusive tests. Therefore, it cannot stand on its own.
Conclusion
The Personality Assessment Inventory test is one of the latest psychotherapy tests to be invented in the field of psychology. It remains a breakthrough story due to the comprehensiveness it offers to the persons being subjected to it along with the person using it.
Having been invented less than 25 years ago, it has been adopted and customized by different researchers for different needs while still providing consistent results. The adoption of the system in countries such as China has seen the test being modified to meet some cultural demands of the Chinese people thus making it a preferred test by many psychologists.
Reference List
Blaise, M. et al. (2011). Clinical Applications of the Personality Assessment Inventory. New York: Routledge.
Cheung, F. (1996). Development of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 27(2), 181-199.
Douglas, K. (2001). Validity of the Personality Assessment Inventory for Forensic Assessments. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 45(2), 183-197.
Edward, W., Steiner, D., & Walfish, S. (2010). A Review and Comparison of the Reliabilities of the MMPI-I, MCMI-III and PAI Presented in their Respective Test Manuals. Measurements and Evaluations in Counseling and Development, 42(4), 246-254.
Morey, L. (2000). Personality Assessment Inventory: Clinical Interpretive Report. Psychology Assessments Australia. Web.