Questionnaires are regularly used to assess personality. Discuss some of the difficulties associated with this particular type of method.

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Questionnaires are regularly used to assess personality. Discuss some of the difficulties associated with this particular type of method.

Today, there are many different methods of assessing personality, some of which get used in everyday life in order to gauge someone's personality with the intention of finding out whether someone is compatible with oneself. In psychology, we understand personality and its difficulties, through various research methods, ranging from observations, structured personality tests or questionnaires to projective techniques. The aim of such methods is to assess an individual's behavioural dispositions, whether extrovert or introvert, confident or insecure. However, questionnaires are conceivably the most straightforward and direct way to make an assessment, making them the most popular method of personality research. Nevertheless, their accuracy is often disputed, as there are many difficulties associated with questionnaires.

Personality questionnaires were first devised in post-war America (1918) to assess whether soldiers were emotionally disturbed. The structure was basic, requiring only yes/no answers, but these stimulated use of questionnaires in further personality research, first taken up by Allport who initiated the Trait theory. However, his questionnaires failed to take into account gender, age and culture and have been criticised for their lack