ABSTRACT
IN trying to sum up the practical implications of our survey, it is advisable to distinguish three main situations in which personality tests or assessments are required—selection, experimentation, and diagnosis or guidance. The field of selection is the most straightforward because it is the least affected by the difficulties of personality theory and the many unsolved problems discussed in Chap. I. For example, there is no need to reach agreement as to the main traits or dimensions of personality. The value of any proposed test or other method can be determined directly by comparison with some external criterion such as educational or vocational success and failure. At the same time, progress along purely empirical lines is likely to be slow; the choice of suitable methods depends largely on adequate personality theory, and on advances in the experimental and diagnostic study of personality. And, as Vernon and Parry point out, follow-up research and the discovery of good external criteria are far from easy. The application of tests for selection is handicapped, too, by the need for such tests to be short and simple, not dependent on highly trained testers nor on elaborate apparatus, and so forth.
