A Note on Some Measures of Profile Agreement

Profile similarity or agreement is increasingly used in personality research and clinical practice and has potential applications in many other fields of psychology. I compared 4 measures of profile agreement—the Pearson r, Cattell's (1949) Cattell, R. B. 1949. rp and other coefficients of pattern similarity. Psychometrica, 14: 279–298. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] r p , McCrae's (1993) McCrae, R. R. 1993. Agreement of personality profiles across observers. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 28: 13–28. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] r pa , and an intraclass correlation coefficient (double entry), ICCDE—using both broad factor and specific facet profiles. Matched versus mismatched self-ratings/other ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory–3 (McCrae, Costa, & Martin, 2005 McCrae, R. R., Costa, P. T. Jr. and Martin, T. A. 2005. The NEO–PI–3: A more readable Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 84: 261–270. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) were used as criteria. At the factor level, r pa and ICCDE were comparable, and both were superior to r p in distinguishing matched versus mismatched profiles. At the facet level, ICCDE was superior to the other coefficients. The Pearson r performed better than expected.