Career Assessment and the Comrey Personality Scales

Abstract

The Comrey Personality Scales (CPS; Comrey, 1970a, 1970b, 1980, 1994) represent a personality inventory developed by factor analytic methods. The personality taxonomy upon which the CPS is based was constructed using a unique set of procedures designed to yield broad factors at an intermediate level in the hierarchy of factors. These procedures involve factor analyzing a collection of mutually distinct Factored Homogeneous Item Dimension (FHID) scores instead of individual items to locate the main personality factors. A FHID score is a total score over four homogeneous seven- choice items, two positively stated and two negatively stated to control for response sets. The eight CPS factors identified in this way are named: Trust versus Defensiveness (T), Orderliness versus Lack of Compulsion (O), Social Conformity versus Rebelliousness (C), Activity versus Lack of Energy (A), Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism (S), Extraversion versus Introversion (E), Mental Toughness versus Sensitivity (M), and Empathy versus Egocentrism (P). The CPS also has a Response Bias (R) scale to detect social desirability responding and a Validity (V) scale to detect invalid records. Many empirical studies are referred to that provide evidence for the factorial, construct, and empirical validity of the CPS scales measuring these factors. Brief summaries are offered for the interpretation of high and low CPS scores for use in career counseling.