Introduction

The development of organizations, student groups, work groups, personal competence, interpersonal relations, and professional behavior may be more easily planned and accomplished when behavioral tendencies are clearly identified. There are many psychological tests that provide an accurate description of some of the client’s behavior. However, simply knowing “what is” is not sufficient: It is also necessary to know what “is desired,” that is, what behaviors the client (or others) would like to change and in what manner.

Unfortunately, the client usually cannot objectively provide this information and most tests do not either. Fortunately, the preferred and standard administration of the ACL can.  That is the Real-Ideal administration.

The test-taker goes through the list of adjectives twice: First, selecting those that describe the test-taker’s most frequent behavior (the Real Self set); then the second time selecting those that describe the behavior the test-taker would like to have (the Ideal Self set).  The similarity and difference between the two are valuable supplemental (to the scales) items of information. For instance, it clearly presents areas of satisfaction and areas of dissatisfaction which may indicate the positive or negative potential for change.

The Adjective Check List Interpretive Report (ACLIR), for Gough’s ACL, was developed in 1987 by Daniel R. Collins, Ed.D., and Fred L. Adair, Ph.D., and licensed by Consulting Psychologist’s Press (CPP). We now provide expanded  statistical, graphical, and narrative data for the ACL’s six factors and 37 scales.  Research and development by Dr. Collins expanded the functionality of the  ACL scales for the purpose of measuring and describing Relationship Compatibility, Personal Congruency, Emotional Intelligence, Character Strengths and Virtues, Holland’s vocational scales, and behaviors related to leadership, educational, and professional behavior. Also, in addition to the charts for the scales, interactive charting has been developed that shows the effect that two behaviors have interactively with each other, effectively providing a new view of the test-taker’s behavior.

The Adjective Check List

The Adjective Check List (ACL) was developed by Harrison Gough, Ph.D., at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) in 1948, as a method for quantifying observations. The ACL is  elegant and  deceptively simple.  Simple, in that it requires only a ninth grade reading level, is nonthreatening, and is usually completed in about 15 minutes. Elegant, in that: (1) Its original normative population is almost 10,000 people; (2) it has been translated into 20+ languages and used worldwide; (3) it is robust and not “item content or context”  limited; and (4) it provides a wealth of information that has both breadth and depth. The selection of context-free adjectives provides the expressive functionality of projective instruments while it remains an objective instrument.

The ACL provides measurement data 6 Factors anr  37 Scales which are grouped into five categories identifing  the focus of the scales. The categories are: Modus operandi, Psychological needs, Topical scales, Transactional Analysis, and (Welsh’s)  Origence and Intellectence.