Measurement Information

Personality psychologists use a variety of measurement techniques and different versions of measure to operationalize the constructs they study. Most of you will be using a combination of measures to get at your constructs. Some of those measures may be ones you develop yourself, but you will probably be using already developed measures also. Often it requires some detective work to find the measures you need. Ideally, you want to find is a published version of your measure that contains information on to administer it, how to score it, and its validity and reliability. Sometimes you will find that in an easily accessible article that you can get from the library copies of journals or download from electronic databases. Often, however, you will need to contact the researcher(s) who developed the measure and obtain information directly from them.

Most researchers in the field are very open to receiving inquiries about their work, so you shouldn’t hesitate to get in touch with them with your questions. Note, however, that they may justifiably irritated or reluctant to answer inquiries if the information is easily and readily available elsewhere, or if it is obvious that you know almost nothing about their work—so do your homework before you write to another researcher. For example, it is inappropriate to write something like the following, which I received from an undergraduate last year: "Dear Dr. Norem—I am trying to find something to do for my research course in psychology, and depressive pessimism sounds interesting. Can you write back and tell me about your research?" (Note, for one thing, that I do research on defensive pessimism, not depressive pessimism….).

When you do email, use a formal mode of address (i.e., Dear Prof. X, or Dr. X, not Dear Fred…), be concise, polite and as specific as possible in your request. An example of an appropriate inquiry I received (I left off some identifying information):

Dear Dr. Norem,

I am a final year psychology student at the University of X. I am doing a dissertation on defensive pessimism, and I was wondering if I could ask you to send me a copy of the questionnaire that you put together some years ago. I've looked for it on the Internet, but haven't been able to locate the actual questionnaire (only many referrals to it!). I'd be very grateful if you could email it to me. I know that the first version came up in 1986, but perhaps you've revised it more recently, or are aware of other questionnaires that tap into the notion of defensive pessimism.

Thank you very much in advance and I hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,

Katrina X

Here are a variety of cites that can be helpful when you are seeking further information:

Association for Research in Personality
This is the home page for the Association for Research in Personality, and contains lists of members. Often these are hotlinks, and if there is a researcher whose work you are interested in, you can go directly to their website to find further information about the measures they use. Alternatively, you can usually find their email addresses within the list, and then get in contact with them about their work.

The Personality Project
This is an extremely useful site in general, because it provides orientations to many of the key issues, historical developments, major researchers, and methodologies in personality psychology. It also contains links to researchers’ websites

The International Personality Item Pool
This site is designed to promote collaboration among researchers in personality psychology, and is a great source for certain kinds of self-report or observer rating measures in personality, particularly if you are specifically interested in measuring personality traits.

Social Psychology Network - Listserv Message Center
This site provides a way for you to get in touch with hundreds of personality and social psychology researchers

Social Psychology Network - Measurement and Testing
This site provides some additional sources of information on measurement generally

Encyclopedia of Psychology
Another general source.