Projective Testing in a Clinical Setting

1. Projective Testing in a Clinical Setting Debate by: Pro: Molly Weston, Nina Losorelli, Bethany Sills Con: Nakia Williams, Jennice Pamilton, Nicole Murph Moderator: Gabriela Pelaez

2. Projective Testing • Definition— • Long History and Use in Clinical Settings • People structure their experience around their personality. • People’s reasons for their actions can be clear or ambiguous. • Examples—Rorsach Ink Blot Test & Thematic Apperception Test • Subject to intense debate. .

3. Pros • Projective Testing allows for partial interpretation of the person’s personality in reaction to stimuli. • Projective Testing allows for immediate assessment of personality. • Projective Testing is more beneficial for those who are not as fluent with the language or construction of the test. • Projective Testing allows for assessment of issues that are currently present to the client unlike systematic assessment. • Projective Testing allows the client the freedom to choose to help eliminate misdiagnosis.

4. Cons • Projective tests are found to be more subjective than objective. • Projective tests can easily be misinterpreted by the clinician and test taker • Projective tests have been found to have poor reliability and validity. • Projective tests are not used cross culturally. • Projective tests have a high chance of being unethical.

5. Pro’s Rebuttal to the Con’s • 1.  Although projective testing is more subjective, this is beneficial because it allows clinicians to explore multiple diagnoses with patients rather than computer answers. • 2.  Projective tests do come with standardized answers for the tests and are based on comparative norms. • 3.  Not only have certain projective tests been found to have low reliability and validity, so have certain objective measures, like the ACT (American College Test) for instance. • 4.  Although projective tests aren't normally used cross-culturally, they can be used to assess some clients that have commonalities with the norms. • 5.  Projective tests aren't unethical because they do come with standardized results and are compared with norms.

6. Con’s Rebuttal the Pro’s • 1.  Projective testing use ambiguous stimulus to elicit an unstructured response to the person's personality. • 2. Projective testing allows for immediate assessment of personality, but it is not necessarily an accurate assessment of a person's personality. • 3. Projective testing uses stimuli that may have different meaning to different cultures. • 4. Projective testing does not determine what issues are current in a persons life or from the past. • 5. Projective testing is more conducive to misdiagnosis because each individual will respond differently to the same stimuli.

7. Pro’s Rebut to the Con’s Rebuttal • 1. It is the depth and openness of the unstructured response that leads to the freeness and total expression of the client, which objective testing cannot reach due to its structured form and sometimes ipsitive questions. • 2.  Although there is immediate assessment of the test, there are still standardized test answers to eliminate the test administrator from misinterpreting the responses. • 3.  Researchers can study the different cultures they want to research to find what the norms are before they apply the test to these cultures. • 4.  Projective testing is relevant to what is going on in a person's life currently because they have the opportunity to test, and retest over time.  This allows researchers to focus on what a person's diagnosis is at a current time. • 5.  While each participant has the chance of responding differently, there are still standardized norms for these tests.

8. Con’s Rebut the Pro’s Rebuttal • 1. If the patient went to another clinician, and did a projective test, there would be a lack of consistency among the clinicians diagnosis's. • 2.With projective tests, anyone could come up with “standardized answers” that can be far fetched and even test takers may not agree with. • 3.The main concern for projective testing is that one clinician’s diagnoses for one patient will not be suitable for the general population. • 4.The idea of projective tests is to bring out the specifics of a person’s personality. These projective tests are not designed to pick out the commonalities of a persons personality with other people. This is why projective tests can not be used cross culturally. • 5. Projective tests are unethical because even though they have “standardized results” those results are based upon the clinicians opinions and not facts.

9. Conclusions • Effectiveness Will Always Be Questioned. • More Research Is Needed. • Clinicians Must Follow Standardization Procedures. • Adhere to Exner’s (1983) System • Follow Strict Ethical Guidelines

10. Any Questions?