A Psychometric Instrument Better than Myers Briggs.

From DrewDad's explanations (and yes I do know he can speak for himself), I get the impression that he isn't actually using Myers Briggs as a scientific device. Rather, he's using it as a rhetorical device. When DrewDad observes people irritating each other, Myers-Briggs character types help him frame issues that might cause the irritation. As a rhetorical device, Myers Briggs does make sense to me.

Thomas, the rhetorical device you suggest seems so arbitrary as to not be useful. There is no predictive power to such a rhetorical device, and there is no way to test whether one rhetorical device is better then another. It seems too arbitrary to me to be useful.

I think you're still expecting too much from what is a simple, basic test.

A ruler only measures length, and can only provide me limited data.

The MBTI only measures a few personality preferences. It can predict behavior, though.

DrewDad wrote:

A ruler only measures length, and can only provide me limited data.

But everybody agrees that the thing it provides limited data about---length---exists. Not everybody agrees that Jungian types exist. And the test itself isn't there to verify or refute Jung's psychological theories. Its job is to expound the theory, "to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives" (as the Myers-Briggs Foundation puts it). Unless you subscribe to C.G. Jung's theory in the first place, there's no reason to believe the test measures anything substantive at all.

Measurement is a bitch.

Test Validity

The overall problem with psychological tests concerns their ability to measure what they are supposed to measure.

The accuracy, or usefulness, of a test is known as its validity. For example, suppose you wanted to develop a test to determine which of several job applicants would work well in a bank. Would an arithmetic test be a valid test of job success? Well, not if the job required other skills, such as manual dexterity or social skills.
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Construct Validity refers to the ability of a test to measure the psychological construct, such as depression, that it was designed to measure. One way this can be assessed is through the test’s convergent or divergent validity, which refers to whether a test can give results similar to other tests of the same construct and different from tests of different constructs.

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Content Validity refers to the ability of a test to sample adequately the broad range of elements that compose a particular construct.

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Criterion-related Validity refers to the ability of a test to predict someone’s performance on something. For example, before actually using a test to predict whether someone will be successful at a particular job, you would first want to determine whether persons already doing well at that job (the criterion measure) also tend to score high on your proposed test. If so, then you know that the test scores are related to the criterion.

Test Reliability

The ability of a test to give consistent results is known as its reliability. For example, a mathematics test that asks you to solve problems of progressive difficulty might be very reliable because if you couldn’t do calculus yesterday you probably won’t be able to do it tomorrow or the next day. But a personality test that asks ambiguous questions which you answer just according to how you feel in the moment may say one thing about you today and another thing about you next month.
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Internal Consistency Reliability refers to how well all the test items relate to each other.

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Test-retest Reliability refers to how well results from one administration of the test relate to results from another administration of the same test at a later time.

Note that without reliability, there can be no validity. A thermometer, for example, may be a valid way to measure temperature, but if the electronic thermometer you are using has bad batteries and it gives erratic (that is, unreliable) results, then its reading is invalid until the batteries are changed.

Note also that no psychological test is ever completely valid or reliable because the human psyche is just too complicated to know anything about it with full confidence. That’s why there can be such uncertainty about a case even after extensive testing.
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/testing.htm

One of the most popular personality tests in the world is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a psychological-assessment system based on the work of psychologist Carl Jung. Two and a half million Americans a year take the Myers-Briggs. Eighty-nine companies out of the US Fortune 100 make use of it, for recruitment and selection or to help employees understand themselves or their co-workers.

The MBTI asks the candidate to answer a series of ‘forced-choice’ questions, where one choice identifies you as belonging to one of four paired traits. The basic test takes twenty minutes, and at the end you are presented with a precise, multi-dimensional summary of your personality. The MBTI test classifies people into types based on 4 bi-polar dimensions;

Extraversion-Introversion (E-I)
Distinguishes a preference for focusing attention on, and drawing energy from, the outer world of people and things versus the inner world of ideas and impressions.

Sensing-INtuition (S-N)
Distinguishes a preference for gathering data directly through the senses as facts, details, and precedents (Sensing) versus indirectly as relationships, patterns, and possibilities (INtuition).

Thinking-Feeling (T-F)
Distinguishes a preference for deciding via objective, impersonal logic (Thinking) versus subjective, person-centered values (Feeling).

Judging-Perceiving (J-P)
Distinguishes an outward preference for having things planned and organized (Judging) versus a flexible style based more on staying open to options than deciding (Perceiving).

There are 16 distinct personality types, so someone may be classed as ESFP or INTJ, or some other combination. This is obviously a different way of looking at personality from the big 5 personality trait theory of Costa & McCrae.

Psychologists judge the worth of any personality test by two basic criteria: validity and reliability. Validity indicates that a test measures what it says it measures and reliability indicates that a test delivers consistent results.

Validity of MBTI
The validity of a test estimates how well the test measures what it purports to measure. There are two types of validity that should be considered:

Construct validity - does the MBTI relate to other scales measuring similar concepts?

Criterion-related validity - does the MBTI predict specific outcomes related to interpersonal relations or job performance?

The National Academy of Sciences committee reviewed data from over 20 MBTI research studies and concluded that only the Intraversion-Extroversion scale has adequate construct validity. That is high correlations with comparable scales of other tests and low correlations with tests designed to assess different concepts. In contrast, the S-N and T-F scales show relatively weak validity. No mention was made in this review about the J-P scale.

Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: ‘at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs’, the very thing that it is most often used for.

Reliability of MBTI
Reliability is the degree of consistency with which a test measures what it is said to measure. Test length greatly affects reliability with longer tests tending to be more reliable. Reliability can be measured using reliability coefficients, and for short personality tests these should be in the range 0.70 to 0.80. The MBTI reports reliability coefficients for its four scales on general population
samples in the ranges from 0.61 to 0.87.

The practical effect of this is that even though the MBTI claims to reveal a subjects’ inborn, unchanging personality type, as many as 75% of test takers are assigned a different type when they take the Myers-Briggs a second time.

Academic psychologists and commercial test providers have a tendency to put a different ‘spin’ on how valid and reliable these personality questionnaires are, with the test providers unsurprisingly ‘talking up’ both validity and reliability.

The following quotes are from David M. Boje, Ph.D., Professor of Management in the Management Department, CBAE at New Mexico State University (NMSU).

“…do not treat the archetype scores of M-B as anything more than Astrology”

“The test is not valid or legal to use for personnel assignments, hiring, or promotion. It does not have predictive validity for such uses. It is a useful guide, and no more. Problem is, people go to a workshop, get excited and treat M-B as a secret window into the mind of their co-workers.”

Robert Spillane, Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University argues that research shows that efforts to predict performance from personality and motivation tests have been consistently and spectacularly unsuccessful.

"[Tests] trivialize human behavior by assuming that (fake) attitudes predict performance. Not only is this incorrect but testers offer no explanations for behavior beyond the circular proposition that behavior is caused by traits which are inferred from behavior,".

"The technical deficiencies of most personality tests have been known for many years. Yet they are conveniently ignored by those with vested interests in their continued use,"

http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm

The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983 to more accurately define the concept of intelligence and to address the question whether methods which claim to measure intelligence (or aspects thereof) are truly scientific.

Quote:

Measurement is a bitch.

No it is not. Measurement is a part of objective science. If there is something worthwhile to measure, then measuring it is not that difficult.

Why do you insist on demonstrating your ignorance? Do you know how many things in the universe are worthwhile to measure, but getting an accurate measurement of them is extremely difficult?

The gravitational constant appears in Newton's law of universal gravitation, but it was not measured until 1798 " 71 years after Newton's death

DrewDad, the personal attacks are little uncalled for.

I would be interested in discussing an example of something worthwhile, but difficult, to measure. It seems to me this is the question of science versus pseudo-science.