Personality testing in nursing practice

Personality Testing Pros & Cons

There are negatives and positives to personality testing in any job; specifically nursing in this research paper. One positive without question is that testing allows employers to know the state of mind of the perspective nurse. Clarity is given to questions i.e. is this an individual that works well under pressure, does the individual have distorted views of healthcare or the population of people that he or she would be serving? These are important aspects for one to have clarity. On the other hand, personality testing is not foolproof. There is a slight possibility that ones assessment is interpreted incorrectly or that the individual is not clear of the questions being asked or the scenarios that are being utilized in the testing. This limits the prospective pool of "competent" nurses as far as psychological testing is concerned.

Furnham (1999) explains that one obvious way to understand the relationship of individual differences to work-related behavior is to examine the applied literature on personality testing in the workplace. Personality tests, attempting to measure individual differences related to occupational behaviors, have been used for over 60 years, and there now exist nearly 80,000 occupational-related tests. (p.37)

The following have been listed as advantages and disadvantages of personality testing by Furnham as well as other researchers. Tests provide numeric information, which means that individuals can be more easily compared on the same criteria. In interviews, different questions are asked of different candidates, and the answers often forgotten. Tests provide comparable profiles. Data-based records allow ones development to be traced over time. Tests give specific results regarding temperament and ability. They are comprehensive and cover all basic dimensions of personality ability. Disadvantages include ability of the test taker to fake it on the test i.e. painting themselves in a favorable light. Tests are often unreliable when dealing with situations i.e. boredom, anxiety etc. In addition, tests are invalid, they do not measure what they say they are measuring, and these scores do not predict behavior over time. For many tests, this is indeed the Achilles heel and they are lamentably short of robust proof of their validity. It is supremely important that tests have predictive and construct validity. People have to be sufficiently literate or articulate to do these tests, not to mention sufficiently familiar with North American jargon. Many organizations therefore believe that their workforce could not do them properly, they would take up too much time, or they would cause needless embarrassment.