Personality Research Form

The Personality Research Form (published by Sigma Assessment Systems) was developed by Douglas N. Jackson to assess Murray's comprehensive system of human needs. The PRF can be viewed as tapping fundamental features of motivation with broad relevance to human behavior across diverse contexts.

Various forms of the PRF are available. A and B are parallel forms and shorter, with only 15 scales. Forms AA and BB are also parallel forms and, like E, contain an additional 7 scales. Form G is the same as Form E but does not contain the Infrequency scale. The scales for forms A, B, AA, and BB contain 20 items each, whereas the scales of E and G contain 16 items each. Forms E and G are by far the most commonly used. The PRF-E contains 20 content scales for assessing human needs and two validity scales (Infrequency and Desirability). Infrequency was designed to assess random or careless responding or invalidity due to poor language comprehension. The Infrequency items are unlikely but not impossible. A score of 4 out of 16 indicates invalidity. Desirability is a measure of the evaluative good-bad dimension in which low scores can indicate an insensitivity to evaluation and high scores represent a propensity to appear favorable. The Desirability scale was also used for item selection. There is no item overlap between any of the 22 scales, and, with the exception of Infrequency, items were selected that correlated more highly with their own scale than any other scale.

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The 22 scales of Form E contain 8 items true keyed and 8 items false keyed. Items are ordered to foster local independence by presenting one item from each of the 22 scales, and then this block of 22 items repeats in the same sequence with alternative keying. The 20 bipolar content scales of Form E can be categorized into the following: (a) impulse expression and control (Impulsivity and Change vs. Harm Avoidance), (b) work and play (Achievement and Endurance vs. Play), (c) direction from other people (Succorance vs. Autonomy), (d) intellectual and aesthetic pursuits (Understanding and Sentience), (e) ascendance (Dominance vs. Abasement), and (f) interpersonal relationships (Affiliation, Nurturance, Exhibition, and Social Recognition vs. Aggression and Defendence).

The PRF can be administered in paper-and-pencil format with reusable question booklets to individuals or to groups and takes about 35 minutes. In addition to hand scoring, mail-in scoring, and Internet scoring, computerized administration with automated scoring and reporting is also available. Software reports are either clinical with some interpretation or ASCII (text) data file reports for research. The PRF is available in English, French, and Spanish. The reading level is between Grades 5 and 6. Normative data stratified by gender are available separately for juveniles and adults.