Projective Testing

Projective techniques are tests that involve the use of open-ended stimuli such as inkblots as well as pictures, drawings, and words. In projective testing, an examinee is asked to respond to the stimulus and supply structure to the unstructured test material and this structure reflects fundamental aspects of the examinee's personality. In supplying structure to unstructured test material, the individual reveals his or her desires, conscious and unconscious needs, fears, perceptions, and inner conflicts. This is known as the projective hypothesis. Thus, projective tests are indirect methods of assessing an examinee's personality (Cohen & Swerdlik, 1999).

Projective tests are used in the schools to assess behavioral, emotional, and social functioning of students. Students typically evaluated with projective tests are individuals who are experiencing behavioral, emotional, and/or social difficulties such as students who are unable to establish and maintain relationships with teachers or friendships with peers; students who are depressed or anxious; or students who have a thought disorder. When students' behavioral, emotional, and/or social problems have an adverse impact on their educational performance, these students may meet the eligibility requirements for special education and related services under the emotional disturbance (ED) category of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Projective tests that are commonly used in the schools include picture drawings (e.g., drawings of a person, family, school setting, house, or tree), thematic storytelling techniques (e.g., telling stories about pictures), and sentence completion tests (e.g., completing sentences given sentence stems). Inkblot tests are used less frequently in the schools because of the amount of time and advanced training needed to administer, score, and interpret these tests.

Controversy exists surrounding the psychometric soundness of projective tests. Many have argued that projective tests are not sound instruments from a measurement perspective. Standardized administration and scoring procedures are two standards used to evaluate the quality of a measure. Many projective tests do not have standardized administration and scoring procedures. The lack of objectivity in scoring examinees' responses may produce spurious evidence of validity where none exists and subtle differences in verbal instructions given by examiners to examinees may alter the examinees' test performance. Another criterion for assessing the quality of a measure is the norms of the test. Many projective tests do not have norms (i.e., a large, current and diverse sample of people that have taken the test), have inadequate norms, or do not describe their norming sample in sufficient detail. When norms are lacking, inadequate, or not described [Page 413]in sufficient detail, faulty interpretations of examinees' responses may result. Problems assessing interscorer reliability (i.e., consistency of raters' scoring), internal consistency reliability (i.e., uniformity of the item content), and test-retest reliability (i.e., consistency of examinees' responses over time) have been reported, resulting in spuriously low or high reliability estimates. Validity, another standard for evaluating the quality of a measure, refers to the instrument measuring what it is purported to measure. Most validation studies conducted with projective tests have reported inconclusive results because of methodological problems (i.e., experimental control) and/or problems analyzing the data (i.e., statistical analysis) (Anastasi, 1988). Thus, when evaluating the validity and other psychometric properties of projective techniques, school psychologists should be aware that the psychometric soundness of the majority of these measures has not been demonstrated (Cohen & Swerdlik, 1999).

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