PersonalityPro's Assessment On Singles365.com

PRESS RELEASE -- Nov 26 -- Singles365.com, UK based dating site powered by WhiteLabelDating.com, launched PersonalityPro's Personality Assessment tool. In 6-8 minutes, the test assesses member's basic personality characteristics, perceptions, motivators, communication style and unique strengths. PersonalityPro's tests are used to to increase members conversions on dating and social networking sites. PersonalityPro's test consists of 24 DISC-based questions as well as a number of photo and audio questions.

Mark Brooks: Personality Pro tests are short and fun. The incorporation of photo and audio questions helps keep users attention. If you'd like a copy of my 50 point analysis of 7 white label internet dating services, please email me at [email protected].

Comments

[Ross Williams]

Thanks for that Mark.

Also worth mentioning that due to the success of the system on Singles365.com we're rolling it out to ALL our partner sites today.

These tests have already increased revenue on Singles365.com by 16% in just four days - we're expecting the same increase in revenue on our partners sites on top of an 80% revenue increase across partner sites in November.

If any of your readers would like to try out the personality profile tests, they can quickly create a new partner site via www.whitelabeldating.com and give them a try :o)

Ross

[Anonymous]

What accomodation is being made for those that are sight or hearing impaired?

[James Houran]

It seems that every dating site now "needs" or "must have" a compatibility test of sorts. Of course, most offerings fail to meet professional testing standards -- that is, they aren't reliable or valid, see:

Houran, J., Lange, R., Rentfrow, P. J., & Bruckner, K. H. (2004). Do online matchmaking tests work? An assessment of preliminary evidence for a publicized ‘predictive model of marital success.’ North American Journal of Psychology, 6, 507-526.

Thus, the terms "test" or "assessment" are usually inappropriate to describe these products. It's more accurate to call them just "questionnaires." Moreover, users are generally skeptical of the results from questionniares and legitimate assessments:

Houran, J., & Lange, R. (2004). Expectations of finding a ‘soul mate’ with online dating. North American Journal of Psychology, 6, 297-308.

Here are links to some useful information for interested parties contemplating acquiring such products for their businesses or using a compatibility tool to help find a partner:

http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/features/compatibilitytesting.html

http://www.onlinedatingmagazine.com/columns/2007editorials/05-onlinedatingsitemarriages.html

Thx,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine

[Dora Panayiotopoulos]

James,

Marston-based instruments similar to PersonalityPro’s DISC-based personality assessment have been administered to over 30 million people worldwide and have earned the respect of individuals and professionals alike based on their accuracy and validity.

Tnanks,

Dora Panayiotopoulos

[James Houran]

Hi Dora and list,

Actually, professionals in the tests and measurement field do not respect questionnaires like DiSC because they:

1. Use often use outdated and invalid ipsative methods for response categories.

2. Have reliability and validity based on Classical Test Theory, which has been outdated since 1960. Applied assessments -- like the GRE, MCAT, LSAT use Modern Test Theory to ensure unbiased, interval-level measurement. The assessment field long ago abandoned Classical Test Theory. Sadly, almost no one in the compatibility sciences uses Modern Test Theory, because it is difficult and expensive. I should note that Plenty of Fish does have assessments based on Modern Test Theory -- and I applaud them for that.

3. DiSC-based assessments measure personality variables, which do not seem the key variables to take into consideration in compatibility. Indeed, there can be wide variance in personality traits in a couple and yet ratings of relationship satisfaction are not affected. The similarity principle does not seem to hold for personality variables, in essence.

Finally, it is irrelevant how many millions of people have "completed" a questionnaire. That may indicate some level of interest, availability or popularity, but it does not speak in any way to accuracy or validity. In fact, DiSC-based feedback (and that of similar questionnaires) is usually perceived as being highly accurate and valid by non-discriminating users because the feedback tends to be written akin to "Barnum Statements" -- that is, general feedback that can apply to virtually anyone.

See: http://www.2020skills.com/asts/Barnum%20effects%20in%20assessment.pdf.

However, if you have any research that shows your psychometrics meet professional testing standards AND that the PersonalityPro predicts relationship quality, I'd love to review it for Online Dating Magazine.

Send detailed information on your psychometrics to me please at your earliest convenience.

Thx,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine

[James Houran]

I had Rense Lange, Ph.D. and one of the world's foremost tests and measurements experts (with special emphasis on online testing methodologies) to review the webpage on the research behind PersonalityPro.

Here's his reaction to their material:

"The theoretical claims for PersonalityPro’s DISC-based personality assessment are confusing, and PersonalityPro’s website relies heavily on name-dropping. For instance, it is stated that PersonalityPro’s DISC is just one of over fifty versions that originated in the 1920’s from the theories of Harvard professor William Marston (who, we are informed, in 2006 also was inducted in the cartoon Hall of Fame for having created the “Wonder Woman” character). However, we are not told why PersonalityPro’s version is better than the other 49 versions of DISC. In addition, we are invited to accept the proposition that the Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S) and Compliance (C) factors of the DISC are somehow in “mathematical harmony” with Carl Jung’s far better known notions of extroversion-introversion; perception-intuition; thinking-feeling.

PersonalityPro provides little information concerning the psychometric quality and validity of its version of the DISC. However, their samples indicate that the test is ipsative, i.e., in response to each question, users select one answer suggestive of one of the four DISC factors. As a result, the test provides information only concerning the relative intensity of respondents’ Dominance, Influence, Steadiness or Compliance. While we might perhaps learn that Person A favors Dominance answers whereas B favors those dealing with Compliance, this procedure has the drawback that the absolute intensity of these traits remains unknown. Thus, it is entirely possible that Person B has stronger Dominance than does Person A, but that Person B’s Dominance is exceeded by his/her Compliance.

The preceding also means that the quality of the PersonalityPro DISC’s data necessarily suffer because it cannot be analyzed using Item-Response Theory (IRT), and Rasch scaling in particular. Yet, high-stake applications that require technically defensible and unbiased measures increasingly rely on such methods, and approaches exist that can estimate the intensities of one or more (latent) trait levels simultaneously. IRT can also determine whether respondents’ answers are too consistent or too erratic to be believable, and whether the answers are biased or indicative of response sets. Most importantly, questions and respondents are measured simultaneously, and rather than dealing with ordinal counts of answer types these estimates constitute an interval-level scale of measurement."

As I've told many, many reporters...the prospect that millions of singles are making life-changing decisions based on compatibility tests that are not scientifically sound is a sobering one. Indeed, medical patients would not take a drug that has not been approved by the FDA (unless they are desperate) and likewise people looking for relationships should not so willingly trust online psychological tests and matching systems that have not been independently proven to meet professional testing standards.

Thx,

James Houran, Ph.D.
Online Dating Magazine