Psychological Assessment

1. Psychological Assessment Projective Personality Tests

2. Projective Tests: Essential Features • Individuals must impose their own structure which is meaningful • Stimulus material is unstructured • Indirect (disguised) method • Freedom of response • Interpretation is broad

3. Projective Tests • Rorschach Inkblot Test • Thematic Apperception Test

4. Rorschach Inkblot Test • Hermann Rorschach (1884-1922) • Nicknamed “Kleck” or inkblot • Talented art student who decided to study science • Dream convinced him of relationship between perception and unconscious • 1921 published Psychodiagnostik • Died in 1922

5. Rorschach Inkblot Test

7. Rorschach: Historical 5 Scoring Systems • Adopted by 5 American psychologists with very different theoretical backgrounds • Shared common features (same blots were used, reponse phase followed by inquiry) • 5 different systems of administration, scoring and interpretation emerged • Two most popular (Beck, Klopf)

8. Rorschach: Validity and Reliability Poor psychometric reputation: • Lack of standardized ruls for administration and scoring • Poor inter-rater reliability • Lack of adequate norms • Unknown or weak validity

10. Rorschach: Contemporary Use • John Exner • Established Rorschach Research Foundation in 1986 • Integrated five scoring and interpretation systems • Established empirical support for new system • Provide a center for training

11. Association Phase What might this be? Present all the cards Record response verbatim Note location of response Inquiry Phase I want you to help me see what you saw. I’m going to read what you said, and then I want you to show me where on the blot you saw it and what there is there that makes it look like that so that I can see it too. I’d like to see it just like you did, so help me now. Contemporary Use: Administration

12. Rorschach Inkblot Test • A psychometrically sound test? • An in-class exercise

15. Contemporary Use: Training • Exner workshops on administration, scoring, and interpretation

16. Contemporary Use: Scoring Exner scoring system: The Structural Summary Location • Location (W, D, Dd) • Use of white space (S) Determinants • Form (good, poor, bad quality) • Movement (active and passive) • Color • Texture • Shading

17. Contemporary Use: Interpretation Example: F+% = F+ & Fo/Total F This variable concerns the conventional use of contour in the pure F responses. See example of Structural Summary: • S-Constellation (suicide constellation)

18. Rorschach Inkblot Test • A psychometrically sound test? • Particularly useful in assessing thought processes

19. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • Developed by Henry Murray and colleagues at Harvard Psychological Clinic • 31 TAT cards depicting people in a variety of ambiguous situations (one blank card) • Examinee is asked to create a story about each picture

21. TAT: Administration • Now I want you to make up a story about each of these pictures. Tell me who the people are, what they are doing, what they are thinking or feeling, what led up to the scene, and how it will turn out.

22. TAT: Scoring/Interpretation • Content analysis of themes that emerge from the stories

23. TAT: Psychometric Critique • Selection of cards is not standardized • Lack of norms • Clinicians rely on qualitative impressions

24. Thematic Apperception Test Used to assess: • Locus of problems • Nature of needs • Quality of interpersonal relationships