Читать книгу Enneagram For Dummies - Jeanette van Stijn - Страница 110

The test methods used in psychology offer the following reference points for recognizing a good questionnaire or creating your own:

 The test needs to test what it's supposed to test. For the Enneagram, this means that the questions aim to research the underlying driving forces and the object of one's attention, not one's behavior.

 The questions avoid stereotypical images of a type. The true goal is to also get the existing fine gradations and various manifestations of each type.

 The questions consider the differences that occur on the basis of the personal development status within the individual types. Someone who is in a state that isn’t spiritually healthy responds differently from someone who is in an average healthy state.

 The questionnaire considers the often unconscious tendency to provide socially desirable answers. Rather than say what is really true for them, people sometimes say instead what they wish were true.

 The questions are worded so that they can effectively differentiate between types. That means that the people who have a certain type have to be able to recognize themselves in the questions and that the people who don’t have this type don't recognize themselves. The questions thus can’t be too general or apply to excessively large groups of people. The question “Do you want to be popular among others?” aims toward a frequently occurring desire and thus isn’t suitable for differentiating between Enneagram types.

 The questions differentiate according to the extent to which certain characteristics occur. I have experienced fear now and then, for example, but I definitely don’t see myself in the Enneagram type that’s almost continuously dominated by a subliminal feeling of insecurity.

 The design of the test offers categories for answers from which you can clearly choose. You aren’t forced to choose between two statements in which you either don’t see yourself at all or you see yourself in both.

 The test needs to test what it's supposed to test and gradually allows a congruent image to emerge. The test delivers exactly one Enneagram type as a result, and if that’s the correct one, it also appears as a result in the next one.

I could easily continue this list, especially if I were to also consider the scientific requirements for such tests, but that discussion doesn’t belong in this book.