03.04.06
Posted in social science, sunday school journal at 1:35 pm by Brandon
A few weeks ago, I took a spiritual gift inventory for the new member class at our church. (Yes, now that Jen and I know for sure that we’ll be in Grand Rapids for at least the next 3 years, we’re doing what Zalm would term “membering up”.) As a social scientist in training, I find myself hyper-sensitive to tests of my personality. Thus, you should probably read this post with a grain of salt.
It should also be noted that I’m not trying to critique the PERSON who lead the class that followed the spiritual gift inventory, or the administration (though, I’d suggest greater selectivity in choosing the next class’ spiritual gift inventory.) Further, I’m not really trying to deal with the issue of spiritual gifts themselves. Rather, I’m just a little miffed as to the way that the test evaluated my spiritual gifts.
Some of my results were quite predictable. For example, I scored a big goose-egg when it came to speaking in, or interpreting tongues. I think much of that has to do with the tradition in which people are raised. I’ve never really been exposed to these gifts, and though I’m reticent to say that they can never be practiced effectively today, I find it a little odd that people who interpret tongues only interpret spiritual messages, like “shak a laka bulu zangiti” being translated as “Glory be to God most high!” It just seems a tad wierd that a tongue speaker would never, you know, ask “Which way to the restroom?”, “Do my socks match my skirt?”, “You can’t see my boxers through my khakis, can you?”, or “I hope no-one can tell that I just farted.” Anyway, that’s just an aside.
What really struck me were the items measuring evangelism. One particular item really got me. It went something like this: “I desire to be all things to all people in order to win them over.” I strongly disagreed. My reasoning was that I really just wanted to be myself. Another evangelism item reflected a desire to spread the gospel. I strongly agreed with that one. Another item was a double barreled question that combined both the desire to spread the gospel, and the individual’s intent to share the gospel verbally to unbelievers by telling them about the love of God or something. Here, I do have a desire to share the gospel, but I have questions about the methods and modes of that communication…thus, I split the difference.
One tool that quantitative social scientists use to understand if a scale is really getting at what they think it’s getting at, is a reliability analysis. Essentially, reliablility is the idea that if scale items are each measuring the same thing and doing it well, they should be highly correlated with one another. Logically, this makes sense. If I asked you three questions about an identical topic, you should give me similar answers each time. If however, I asked you three questions about a topic I believed to be identical and you gave me three very different answers, I would know that I probably didn’t ask questions that were really getting at the topic at hand.
My answers to the evangelism questions are as divergent as possible. I would suspect that others displayed the same unreliablity.
Beyond unreliability, I think there’s a greater issue with this particular scale (and, I’m picking on evangelism here, but I feel that there were a plethora of reliability issues with the scale.) I’m not sure that it’s really on target. I mean, I think that it could reliably measure the spiritual personality of a modern with regard to evangelism, but for a pomo, it falls flat. For me, the notion of ‘being all things to all people in order to win some’ is a rather dubious way to measure evangelism.
Further, the scale was laced with double barrelled and leading questions. So much so that I have hardly any confidence in its results. I can’t help but wonder why it is that Christians sometimes settle for such a lax view of science. And, yeah, a lot of that pops up with regard to the issue of natural science and the origins debate, but it creeps its way into all areas of academia, too. Such scales are an indicator of the greater movement in Christianity–toward academic laziness. And, amazingly lots of young ’scholars’ go to Christian colleges where, many times, this academic laziness is championed. And, the cycle begins again.
It’s my prayer that the next generation of Christian college professors are a little more critical than the last one, and they are able to bridge the nebulous gap between academia and the Kingdom of God. I suppose I’ll have to place my hope in Steve.
**Note: No, it’s not all Christian College profs that promote this ideal of academic laziness. There’s some really good ones out there, I’m speaking more broadly about a disturbing general trend.
Tags: Spiritual Gifts, Social Science
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12.21.05
Posted in social science at 11:19 am by brandon
I hate personality testing.
Now, it’s not that I don’t like taking the tests, sometimes they’re quite entertaining. I rather enjoy seeing how I turn out–see what category of the authors of personality test I fit into. And, it’s not those little online quizzes (like what muppet are you, or what is your perfect living situation) that drive me nuts. Those are okay, because nobody really cares what your outcome is (and because of that people are basically honest).
The tests that drive me nuts are those of the Myers-Briggsian sort. The kind that like to put you in a little box, those are the ones that suck. And, it’s not just that they suck, it’s that I think they’re worthless.
Here’s why. First, people put way too much stock in the outcomes of these things. Now, for all the consultants out there who make mega-bucks on corporate types who fork out shitloads of money just to have some dapperly dressed 45ish year old roll in and solve all of the office’s communication problems with a quick and dirty Myers-Briggs and 35 minutes of ‘consultation’ about group dynamics, for all of you, I’m sorry. But, you’re full of crap.
Part of the reason that I think people put too much stock into personality testing is that people too often answer the questions on those tests not as a reflection of who they are, but more as a reflection of what people tell them they should be. That is, the group surrounding a person, in my opinion, makes much more of a difference on the outcome of that test than a person’s actual personality. Further, if you buy into self-monitoring theory (Snyder, 1974, 1979)–and I’m not saying you should, necessarily–you will accept that some people probably have the ability to change their behavior in various situations so that they can be percieved to be more appropriate.
Second, the basic premise of the Myers-Briggs is built upon the idea that people can report in a valid and reliable manner on their personality traits. In short, the test assumes that people know themselves well. That works well until you take into consideration all of the other variables that could potentially cloud the outcome of such a test.
For example, because the test is usually administered in a single temporal event and there’s no cumulative data which can be summed and used as a composite personality score, it’s subject to variations in the subject’s mood, sickness, etc. In short, perhaps I was working on filing some papers the same day I sit down to take the Myers-Briggs (a real possibility given the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is often administered by consultants in office settings), and heuristically, I think to myself, “Well, I’m quite an organized person, I’ve been filing today!” This kind of error would be likely to artificially inflate the J score and deflate the P score. Because the test is only administered once, the scores are more likely to be subject to this sort of measurement error.
Third, and this one’s a little scientific so bear with me, I’m not convinced of the multi-dimensionality of many of these scales. The fact that the MBTI folks have found that each of the categories aren’t equally populated (which you’d expect for a purely multi-dimensional scale) indicates that probably some of these supposedly unique personality traits are actually associated and may just be manifestations of the same trait. That’s bad.
What drives me the ‘nutz-est’ about these tests is that people actually believe that they’re going to make some substantive difference in their group’s ability to work well together. Now, that’s not to say that some intentional time as a group reflecting on the strengths of other members isn’t helpful. Often it is quite helpful, it’s just that we don’t need a personality test to tell us what’s important about a member’s contribution to the group. And, it’s especially unhelpful when the outcome of that test is less a reflection of a person’s personality and more a reflection of what that person perceives that the group sees as their role.
There’s way more similarity among people than there is difference. We’re all basically the same with some topical differences. What’s really interesting and helpful are those ways that we’re all the same. I’ve come down on the MBTI a bit harshly here, I hope you see that my critique has a much wider scope than just the MBTI. There are actually more popular (and scientifically much less founded) tests out there currently that I loathe much more.
So, all you individual difference social science researchers can all go sod off. Kidding. Mostly.
Tags: Personality, Psychology, Myers-Briggs.
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