Contemporary Research Emphasis in Personality Assessment: A Bibliometric Analysis Mapping Investigatory Domain (2009–2018)

Bibliometric studies, particularly content analysis methodologies, of the extant literature can provide a snapshot on the nature, scope, and breadth of a select body of knowledge available in scholarly repositories. Although several bibliometric studies regarding the field of Personality Assessment have appeared, few have reported on an exploratory ‘topical’ analysis on the main subject areas or domains across a pool of studies over time. The current study is an initial attempt to address this gap in the literature by conducting a content analysis of research studies published in the Journal of Personality Assessment(JPA) over the past 10 years. The major aim is to determine the scope and breadth of investigatory topical areas most emphasized by researchers during this time frame (not on individual tests or assessment instruments under study). An online search in PsycINFO identified a total of 750 articles in JPA from 2009 to 2018; of these, 677 were determined to be ‘primary’ articles (comments, replies, erratum, editorials were excluded) and served as the data-set for the analysis. The author coded each article with a topical descriptor and maintained a scoring template based on frequency counts across categories. The analysis identified34 topical categories which represented at least 1% of the total distribution. The top researched topics were: personality disorders, statistical approaches/methods analysis, models/theory, construct validation, scoring issues/response format, 5-factor/Big 5, interpersonal factors, brief tests/short forms, therapeutic assessment, and cross-national test adaptations. Moreover, a myriad of highly salient topics in the clinical literature received limited investigatory attention in JPA (e.g., Computer report narratives, substance abuse, suicide potential, stress syndromes, Dark Triad, assessment of the elderly, well-being). Overall, this descriptive analysis confirms that the field of personality assessment is robust in scope and reflects varied research interests, yet the breadth of investigatory and/or perhaps editorial topical interest could be expanded to include diverse clinical areas. These exploratory findings should be considered tentative since the study results are based on the scholarly content of only one journal in the field. Future bibliometric studies would benefit by examination of the extant literature, indexed across multidisciplinary scholarly databases, on the general subject area of personality assessment.