ABSTRACT
The goal of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI; Gough & Bradley, 1996) is to put information into the hands of a qualified interpreter that may be used to construct a true-to-life picture of the person who was tested. This purpose involves several important considerations. One is that the focus is always on the individual, not on nomothetic or aggregated data. A second is that the interpreter of the inventory should have proper training and background, and should possess the intuitional and empathic skills that accurate psychodiagnosis demands. A third is that the scales of the inventory should be relevant to, and predictive of, consequential criteria in the daily life of the individual. A fourth consideration is that the information conveyed by each scale, and by configurations of scales, should be in a form that builds on and takes advantage of the interpreter's lifelong experiences and natural observational talents.
