The ACL was first developed in the early days of the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
It is self-administering, may be completed in 10 to 15 minutes, arouses little resistance or anxiety, and has proved useful in studies of highly effective persons in occupations other than politics such as architecture, mathematics, law, medicine, and management.
"Further, as a multidimensional instrument, which taps several domains of personality, the ACL affords an appraisal of positive as well as negative factors in human behavior, thus avoiding the frequently found preoccupation with psychopathological bases of political activity.
Additionally, as an established standardized, and quantitative assessment procedure, the ACL reduces the problems of reliability and comparability entailed in studies relying on interviews or on ad hoc, limited use or abbreviated personality measures” (Constantini & Craik, 1980, p.
[4] "We propose that the Gough-Heilbrun Adjective Check List is another broad-range instrument with considerable promise as a general cross-cultural research tool.
[5] The ACL scales were realigned in 2012 by Rob Devine in consultation with Gough to highlight how collections of characteristics, skills, and competencies impact success at work.