2 Taxonomy is always a contentious issue because the world does not come to us in neat little packages (S. Personality has been conceptualized from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and at various levels of Each of these levels has made unique contributions to our understanding of individual differences in behavior and experience. However, the number of personality traits, and scales designed to measure them, escalated without an end in sight (Goldberg, 1971). Researchers, as well as practitioners in the field of personality assessment, were faced with a bewildering array of personality scales from which to choose, with little guidance and no overall rationale at hand. What made matters worse was that scales with the same name often measure concepts that are not the same, and scales with different names often measure concepts that are quite similar. Although diversity and scientific pluralism are useful, the systematic accumulation of findings and the communication among researchers became difficult amidst the Babel of concepts and scales. Many personality researchers had hoped that they might devise the structure that would transform the Babel into a community speaking a common language. However, such an integration was not to be achieved by any one researcher or by any one theoretical perspective. As Allport once put it, " each assessor has his own pet units and uses a pet battery of diagnostic devices " (1958, p. 258). What personality psychology needed was a descriptive model, or taxonomy, of its subject matter. One of the central goals of scientific taxonomies is the definition of overarching domains within which large numbers of specific instances can be understood in a simplified way. Thus, in personality psychology, a taxonomy would permit researchers to study specified domains of personality characteristics, rather than examining separately the thousands of particular attributes that make human beings individual and unique. Moreover, a generally accepted taxonomy would greatly facilitate the accumulation and communication of empirical findings by offering a standard vocabulary, or nomenclature. After decades of research, the field is approaching consensus on a general taxonomy of personality traits, the " Big Five " personality dimensions. These dimensions do not represent a particular theoretical perspective but were derived from analyses of the natural-language terms people use to describe themselves 3 and others. Rather than replacing all previous systems, the Big Five taxonomy serves an integrative function because it can represent the various and diverse systems of personality …

The Big Five Trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives.

This personal historical article traces the development of the Big-Five factor structure, whose growing acceptance by personality researchers has profoundly influenced the scientific study of individual differences. The roots of this taxonomy lie in the lexical hypothesis and the insights of Sir Francis Galton, the prescience of L. L. Thurstone, the legacy of Raymond B. Cattell, and the seminal analyses of Tupes and Christal. Paradoxically, the present popularity of this model owes much to its many critics, each of whom tried to replace it, but failed. In reaction, there have been a number of attempts to assimilate other models into the five-factor structure. Lately, some practical implications of the emerging consensus can be seen in such contexts as personnel selection and classification.

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The Structure of Phenotypic Personality Traits

Pedagosko i psiholosko testiranje i procjenjivanje spadaju među najvažnije doprinose znanosti o ponasanju nasem drustvu i pružaju temeljna i znacajna poboljsanja u odnosu na ranije postupke. Iako se ne može ustvrditi da su svi testovi dovoljno usavrseni niti da su sva testiranja razborita i korisna, postoji velika kolicina informacija koje ukazuju na ucinkovitost kvalitetnih instrumenata u onim situacijama u kojima je njihovo koristenje potkrijepljeno validacijskim podacima. Pravilna upotreba testova može dovesti do boljih odluka o pojedincima i programima nego sto bi to bio slucaj bez njihovog koristenja, a također i ukazati na put za siri i pravedniji pristup obrazovanju i zaposljavanju. Međutim, losa upotreba testova može dovesti do zamjetne stete nanesene ispitanicima i drugim sudionicima u procesu donosenja odluka na temelju testovnih podataka. Cilj Standarda je promoviranje kvalitetne i eticne upotrebe testova te uspostavljanje osnovice za ocjenu kvalitete postupaka testiranja. Svrha objavljivanja Standarda je uspostavljanje kriterija za evaluaciju testova, provedbe testiranja i posljedica upotrebe testova. Iako bi evaluacija prikladnosti testa ili njegove primjene trebala ovisiti prvenstveno o strucnim misljenjima, Standardi pružaju okvir koji osigurava obuhvacanje svih relevantnih pitanja. Bilo bi poželjno da svi autori, sponzori, nakladnici i korisnici profesionalnih testova usvoje Standarde te da poticu druge da ih također prihvate.

Standards for educational and psychological testing

On robust estimation of the location parameter

Measurement and control of response bias.

A three-way three-mode extension of De Boeck and Rosenberg's (1988) two-way two-mode hierarchical classes model is presented for the analysis of individual differences in binary object × attribute arrays. In line with the two-way hierarchical classes model, the three-way extension represents both the association relation among the three modes and the set-theoretical relations among the elements of each model. An algorithm for fitting the model is presented and evaluated in a simulation study. The model is illustrated with data on psychiatric diagnosis. Finally, the relation between the model and extant models for three-way data is discussed.

Indclas: a three-way hierarchical classes model

Most item response theory models are not robust to violations of conditional independence. However, several modeling approaches (e.g., conditioning on other responses, additional random effects) exist that try to incorporate local item dependencies, but they have some drawbacks such as the nonreproducibility of marginal probabilities and resulting interpretation problems. In this paper, a new class of models making use of copulas to deal with local item dependencies is introduced. These models belong to the bigger class of marginal models in which margins and association structure are modeled separately. It is shown how this approach overcomes some of the problems associated with other local item dependency models.

Copula Functions for Residual Dependency

We apply the Hawkes process to the analysis of dyadic interaction. The Hawkes process is applicable to excitatory interactions, wherein the actions of each individual increase the probability of further actions in the near future. We consider the representation of the Hawkes process both as a conditional intensity function and as a cluster Poisson process. The former treats the probability of an action in continuous time via non-stationary distributions with arbitrarily long historical dependency, while the latter is conducive to maximum likelihood estimation using the EM algorithm. We first outline the interpretation of the Hawkes process in the dyadic context, and then illustrate its application with an example concerning email transactions in the work place.

Modelling Dyadic Interaction with Hawkes Processes

This article proposes a novel approach to detect differential item functioning (DIF) among dichotomously scored items. Unlike standard DIF methods that perform an item-by-item analysis, we propose the “LR lasso DIF method”: logistic regression (LR) model is formulated for all item responses. The model contains item-specific intercepts, an effect of the sum score, and item-group interaction (i.e., DIF) effects, with a lasso penalty on all DIF parameters. Optimal penalty parameter selection is investigated through several known information criteria (Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion, and cross validation) as well as through a newly developed alternative. A simulation study was conducted to compare the global performance of the suggested LR lasso DIF method to the LR and Mantel–Haenszel methods (in terms of false alarm and hit rates). It is concluded that for small samples, the LR lasso DIF approach globally outperforms the LR method, and also the Mantel–Haenszel method, especially...

Detection of Differential Item Functioning Using the Lasso Approach.

In this article, we tested whether a four-dimensional individual-difference structure of negative emotions (Sadness, Fear, Anger, Shame) as described e.g. by Diener, Smith and Fujita can be found in self-report data when the emotions are explicitly linked to three different specific contexts. In addition, we check the comprehensiveness of the structure by adding terms people spontaneously use to directly express negative affect.



A situational questionnaire was constructed, based on the emotion terms from Diener et al., and it was administered to 161 participants. The structure we obtained was five dimensional instead of four dimensional: the Shame scale turned out to be two dimensional, with guilt and regret defining one factor, and shame and embarrassment defining another factor. Between these two, there is a moderate positive correlation. The structure is shown to be nearly identical for all three situations. The minor differences we found do contextualize the meaning of the emotional responses.



The newly added terms could be captured quite well by the factor Anger. No separate factor was needed, meaning that the obtained five-dimensional structure may be considered comprehensive enough for the field of negative emotions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Paul De Boeck

Papers

Indclas: a three-way hierarchical classes model

Copula Functions for Residual Dependency

Modelling Dyadic Interaction with Hawkes Processes

Detection of Differential Item Functioning Using the Lasso Approach.

The structure of negative emotion scales: Generalization over contexts and comprehensiveness