Problems with Self-report inventories

I have tried to group some of the more ‘popular’ self assessment scales in this Blog, but this is just a general warning about the quite probable misdiagnoses. I have some further work to do to this category, some more general research and produce some guides on how to get the best from them, with appropriate ‘official’ papers and reports and background information on who was responsible for inventing them.

Who is this Beck guy anyway? Yada yada yada…

I have personally used them since my initial diagnosis  to see how
much I have not improved. I like to think I now know what to look for
and some of them were the reports that my shrink used on me, so I am
quite familiar with them. But I would not want someone who has not
sought professional advice to use these on themselves or family
members then diagnose themselves or someone else with Bipolar 1 for
example. That would be just wrong. Please use them to satisfy some
vague curiosity and a very ‘rough’ gauge of your current mental health
or unhealth, as you like.

 

The biggest problem with self-report inventories is that patients
may exaggerate symptoms in order to make their situation seem worse, or
they may under-report the severity or frequency of symptoms in order to
minimize their problems. For this reason, self report inventories
should be used only for measuring for symptom change and severity and
should never be solely used to diagnose a mental disorder. Clinical discretion is advised for all self-report inventories.
 

 

Many personality tests, such as the MMPI or the MBTI
are designed to make it very difficult for a person to exagerate traits
and symptoms. However, these tests suffer from the inherent problems
associated with personality theory and testing, in that personality is a fluid concept that can be difficult to define. Most personality inventories are based on a particular personality theory*.

*I have many theories about my personality but that’s for another time.