reliability

Personality tests are valid – to a point.  It’s almost undisputed that the major personality tests generally tell us something useful about a person.  But how much they tell us is usually pretty small – they make us only slightly smarter about the person taking the test. 

So, how do you change the tests so they make us more than just slightly smarter?  Context, context, context!  One name used for context is “frame of reference.”  So, instead of a context-free item like “I pay attention to details,” you go with an item like “I pay attention to details at work.” 

Lievens and his colleagues challenged the conventional wisdom about why context works.  It has been widely argued that contexts reduces the variability among test-takers, making it less likely that some of the test takers will answer a question across all contexts and others will self-select a context in which they interpret the test questions.