Five big issues in clinical personality assessment: A rejoinder to Costa and McCrae.

Responds to P. T. Costa and R. R. McCrae's reply (see record 1992-25762-001) to the Y. S. Ben-Porath and N. G. Waller article (see record 1992-25755-001) by clarifying the following points: (1) "Normal" personality instruments such as the NEO Personality Inventory should not be used in place of clinical measures, but may serve to provide useful supplemental information; (2) evaluation of the clinical validity of individual test protocols is a vital component of clinical assessment; (3) ordering of scales on a profile implies configural interpretation of test scores, which is common practice in clinical assessment; (4) anxiety, depression, and impulsiveness are viewed by some clinicians as being related to different higher order domains; and (5) clinical correlates thought to be associated with conscientiousness are readily assessable by clinical inventories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)