Journal of Personality Assessment

The Journal of Personality Assessment (JPA) seeks to publish articles on the methods and applications related to the psychological assessment of psychopathology, maladaptive personality, and normative personality processes. JPA strives to publish cutting edge research, which can occur in a number of contexts and settings, including clinical/consulting, counseling, neuropsychological, forensic, health, social/community, multicultural, developmental/educational, industrial/organizational, and screening of candidates for public safety positions. The journal is interested in receiving manuscripts that consider development and validation of new assessment processes and tests, as well as advance the clinical utility and ecological validity of personality assessment in clinical and nonclinical populations. For those papers reporting on the psychometric development of an instrument, the utility, impact, and overall contribution of the findings to the literature will be carefully considered when evaluating papers that will be reviewed and accepted for publication. Ideally, both self-report and non-self-report assessment methods will be part of the validation process, though this is not required for papers to be considered for publication. Papers that report on studies that use causal or process-focused approaches to validity are particularly encouraged. Moreover, research that focuses exclusively on internal structure (e.g., factor analysis, item response theory) without external validation data are unlikely to be published unless exceptional significance and innovation to the field are clearly articulated. Research that examines a new translation of a test must also substantially advance the broader literature on the test itself to be published. Finally, research using convenience samples, such as university students or crowdsourcing (e.g., Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Prolific, Qualtrics), will be considered for publication, but it is important that authors clearly consider the impact of findings with respect to validity and utility (especially for clinical topics) in light of possible generalizability limitations.

Papers devoted to test construction, methods, processes, and applicability of personality assessment in forensic and health care settings are especially desired. JPA also is interested in articles addressing under-studied areas and promising but under-utilized methods. These include (a) systematic reviews or meta-analyses that summarize a body of evidence, (b) the effective integration of nomothetic empirical findings with the idiographic requirements of practice in which the assessor reasons through test and extra-test information to make individualized judgments and provide assessment feedback, (c) the practical value of the clinical assessment process for individuals receiving services and/or those who refer them for evaluation, and (d) an evaluation of cultural, ethnic, and other sociodemographic factors that affect assessment. Finally, JPA will periodically publish special sections or a special issue related to a topic on personality assessment. JPA regularly publishes two sections that focus upon some of its broad areas of interest: Statistical Developments and Applications and Clinical Applications and Case Studies. The goals of the Statistical Developments and Applications (SDA) section are to keep researchers and clinicians informed of new statistical procedures, provide new knowledge about old procedures, and illustrate ways in which statistical procedures have practical applications in personality assessment research or practice. Methodology and design issues will also be considered on occasion. The section hopes to educate researchers to help maximize the quality of the published assessment literature, while simultaneously providing clinicians with easy-to-understand and accessible descriptions of statistical matters. Papers submitted to the SDA section should be accessible to a wide audience, have explicit and clear relevance for personality assessment, and be explicit about the importance of the issues that they address. The goals of the Clinical Applications and Case Studies (CACS) section is two-fold. First, we aim to translate basic science assessment research without obvious clinical implications in terms of clinical applicability. In other words, how can the findings relate to and be used in clinicians’ practice? Articles selected for translation will be those for which the immediate clinical implications are less clear, such as articles that are of a highly technical nature or are written by authors who do not have a clinical background. A research translation article will appear in at least every other issue with authors being invited to contribute by the CASC section editors. Second, the section publishes clinical case studies, but a high threshold for publication exists. Specifically, case studies either must use empirical data to test hypotheses about clinical utility (see e.g., Smith, 2012, on single-case experimental designs) or they must inform and move forward personality assessment in a significant and theoretically meaningful way.

JPA invites comments and product reviews. Each comment should express a substantive opinion on an issue germane to personality assessment, including articles from recent JPA issues; comments on JPA articles should be submitted within three months of the target article’s publication online. The Book, Test, and Software Reviews section publishes brief, paragraph-length descriptions of new personality assessment products as well as detailed reviews written by an expert in the field. Reviews should evaluate the strengths and limitations of books, tests, or software that are relevant to personality assessment practice or research. Comments and reviews typically will be limited to 1,000 words and an abstract is not required.

JPA is the official journal of the Society for Personality Assessment.


Peer Review Policy: Unless noted otherwise, all articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous review by two referees.

Publication office: Taylor & Francis, Inc., 530 Walnut Street, Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106 .

Authors can choose to publish gold open access in this journal.

Read the Instructions for Authors for information on how to submit your article.