Professional Practice Guidelines for Personality Assessment

Abstract

The current paper conveys guidelines for personality assessment developed by a work group formed by the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), which are intended to serve as an aid for best practices specific to personality assessment for professionals, and a source of information for consumers and policy makers. The guidelines were developed after a careful and systematic review of the literature on personality assessment and examination of practice patterns, and were refined through multiple rounds of input from stakeholders including members of SPA and other professionals routinely conducting personality assessment. The guidelines address the scope of personality assessment and current practice trends, minimum education and training qualifications, ethical practices, diversity considerations, assessment procedures, and appropriate applications. By following these guidelines and other established professional standards, psychologists can help ensure that they practice ethically, competently, with appropriate attention to diversity, and to the highest standards of the profession. These guidelines can function as a resource for educators and supervisors of personality assessment. Additionally, the guidelines will serve as a benchmark for best practices in personality assessment and, as such, represent a first step in what is hoped to be an evolution of ever improving personality assessment standards of practice.

Acknowledgments

We dedicate these guidelines to the memory of Bruce L. Smith, Ph.D. These guidelines could not have been completed without his invaluable contributions. We thank SPA Graduate Student Association (SPAGS) members Savannah Grier and Sneha Shankar for their assistance with this project. Our thanks also to SPA Executive Director Nathan Victoria for facilitating and supporting the development of these practice guidelines.

Disclosure statement

These practice guidelines were commissioned by the SPA Board of Trustees. The SPA Board of Trustees provided the task force with a small stipend to hire two student research assistants. We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.