Journal of personality assessment: 60 years

Changes and trends in personality assessment documented through examination of the first issues of the Journal of Personality Assessment (JPA) for the years 1937 to 1997 revealed the following: (a) compared to the Journal of Personality and Psychological Review, JPA published more women first author s and coauthors in every issue except in 1987; (b,) of the total 8,524 indi viduals whose assessment protocols comprised data sets in the 7 issues, 1,6 15 (19%) were patients and 4,839 (57%) were undergraduate college students; (c) combining patients and nonpatients, the average age of children under 13 was 12.24 years, the average age of high school students was 15.28 years , and the average age of adults was 24.20 years; (d) only 6% of the partici pants were identified as African American, Mexican American, Asian American s, or other; and (e) in the 74 articles examined, 98 different tests, techn iques, or tasks to assess personality were discussed. We suggest that futur e research should include a more diverse group of participants that include s more older people and more people of color.