Introduction

Personality can be viewed as both a composite of physical, psychological, and social qualities that distinguish persons from one another and as a self-regulatory system endowed with proactive properties that enable individuals to interact actively with the environment and to contribute to the course of their own development. The aim of personality assessment, then, is to identify and to evaluate both the distinctive features of each person as they impress themselves upon others and the self-regulative mechanisms that underlie the functioning of personality as a whole system and contribute to its continuity and coherence over time and across situations. Accomplishing these goals requires a wide variety of assessment procedures and techniques. Further diversity in techniques derives from the existence of different conceptions of personality; different ...