Call for Papers Deadline: JPA Special Issue on DEISJ - Increasing the Utility of Personality Assessment

Guest Editors: Ksera Dyette, William T. Bryant, Jared Ruchensky

Abstract Submission Deadline: September 31, 2025

We are excited to announce a call for submissions for a landmark Special Issue of the Journal of Personality Assessment, focusing on DEISJ in Personality Assessment. The overall aim of the special issue is to fill the gap between the increasing recognition of the importance of diversity and inclusion for assessment psychology and the relative lack of personality assessment research and guidelines in this area. We believe that fostering an inclusive field is not only a moral imperative but also a catalyst for innovation, creativity, and excellence.

Why Submit to This Special Issue?

Experts in the field of Personality Assessment have the exceptional skills, specialized experience, and professional community supporting the advanced conceptualization and measurement of critical, nuanced constructs that represent how we relate to and exist in the world. Personality Assessment occupies a relatively unparalleled position in psychology as its reach simultaneously extends through clinical, forensic, health, educational, employment, and academic settings, among others. Likewise, its impact as a field affects innumerable individuals and groups across the world. This DEISJ Special Issue gives authors a unique opportunity to directly advance the science and practice of Personality Assessment; to learn and share a better understanding of our diverse world; to highlight and amplify the voices of those who have been systematically oppressed, harmed, and underserved; and to lead Personality Assessment bravely into contemporary and future advances. We want to provide you with the platform of this Special Issue to make a difference.

Hybrid Format

The call for this special issue will have a hybrid format. A series of specific topics will be solicited, but authors will also have the opportunity to submit proposals focused on aspects related to diversity and inclusion in personality assessment that they deem important in order to foster the development of knowledge in this area.

Themes and Topics

We invite original research, reviews, case studies, and thought-provoking essays that explore themes such as:

• The impact of DEISJ on the clinical utility of personality assessment.
• Liberation health/psychology and its intersection with ethics in personality assessment.
• Case studies of successful DEISJ initiatives within personality assessment and how this impacted treatment outcomes.
• The intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other identities in personality assessment and the impact this has on treatment recommendations and potential outcomes.
• Empirical studies as well as meta-analyses/systematic reviews and conceptual papers centered around DEISJ in personality assessment.
• Empirical papers that examine minority stressor variables, such as prejudice events, self-stigma, and negative expectancies, in the context of personality assessment
• Psychometric studies that examine measurement properties, including work focused on predictive validity, inter-rater reliability, factor structure, differential item functioning, measurement invariance, convergent validity, and discriminant validity
• Conceptual papers that incorporate DEISJ into mentorship and training approaches in personality assessment
• Submissions that examine developmental processes in personality and personality assessment in diverse populations
• Empirical work on the measurement and clinical application of cultural mistrust for personality assessment
• Beyond measurement equivalence.
• Challenging how we conceptualize DEISJ in personality assessment, particularly proposals for different ways to conduct our science. 

Submissions beyond this list of themes that still fall within the theme of DEISJ in Personality Assessment are also welcome.