Psychological Assessment Methods & Personality Testing

Posted on Jun 21, 2025 in Economic Sciences

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) was introduced in 1935 by Christina Morgan and Henry Murray of Harvard University. Its significance and comparison with the Rorschach test are notable in many ways, including addressing psychometric challenges. Similar to the Rorschach, the use of TAT rapidly expanded after its introduction. With the exception of the Rorschach, TAT is utilized more frequently than any other projective test. The TAT’s measurement of the need for achievement correlates with factors such as parental perceptions, parental expectations, and parental attitudes toward their offspring. Achievement is also essential for the standards individuals set for themselves as students (e.g., academic standards).

TAT: Stimuli, Administration, and Interpretation

The TAT is more structured and less ambiguous than the Rorschach. TAT stimuli consist of pictures depicting various scenes, totaling 30 pictures and one blank card. Specific cards are designed for men, while others are for women. Some cards are suitable for older individuals, while others are for younger ones. The standardization of administration, particularly the TAT’s scoring process, is as problematic as, if not worse than, that of the Rorschach. Most examiners typically provide instructions such as:

“I will show you some pictures. I want you to tell me a story about each picture.”

There are more interpretive and scoring systems for TAT than for Rorschach. Nearly all methods of interpreting TAT consider the following elements:

  • Hero: The character in each picture with whom the subject identifies (Bellak, 1996).
  • Needs: The underlying motivations or desires of the hero.
  • Press: Environmental forces or pressures acting on the hero.
  • Themes: Recurring patterns or central ideas (e.g., depression).
  • Outcomes: The resolution or conclusion of the story (e.g., failure).

Themes and outcomes also indicate their significance.

Psychometric Properties of TAT

Analysis of existing results indicates that studying specific variables, such as the need for achievement, yields respectably high reliability figures. However, test-retest reliability tends to fluctuate and decreases as the interval between two test sessions increases. The average test-retest correlation in studies is only approximately 0.30. Studies on TAT validity have produced even more ambiguous conclusions. Most experts agree that there is content-related validity evidence for using TAT to evaluate human personality; however, criterion-related evidence for validity is difficult to document.

Alternative Thematic Apperception Tests

An alternative Thematic Apperception Test has been developed using pictures from the Family of Man photo-essay collection. This alternative provides a balance of positive and negative stories and offers varied actions and energy levels for the main character. In comparison, the traditional TAT primarily elicits negative and low-energy stories. The versatility and utility of the TAT method are not only evident through efforts like Ritzler et al. (1980) to update the test but also through the availability of specialized versions:

  • Children’s Apperception Test (CAT): Developed to meet the specific needs of children aged 3 to 10 (Bellak, 1975; see also Meersand, P., 2011). CAT stimuli feature animals instead of human figures, unlike the TAT.
  • Gerontological Apperception Test: Uses stimuli involving one or more elderly persons in scenes with themes related to the concerns of the elderly, such as loneliness and family conflict.

Non-Pictorial Projective Procedures

Word Association Tests

Imagine sitting comfortably in a psychologist’s office. Your task seems simple: the psychologist says a word, and you respond with the first word that comes to mind. The test begins. The first word is”sleep” According to Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer (1968), what is the most common response from college students? Do some of these words evoke any feelings in you? Words like love, father, breast, and masturbation are frequently encountered. The purpose of word association tests is to estimate potential areas of distress and conflict based on an individual’s responses to specific words. Rapaport et al. (1968) later developed a 60-item word association test. Categories of words include:

  • Familial content
  • Domestic content
  • Oral content
  • Anal content
  • Aggressive content
  • Phobic content

Response rates were determined by combining standards from college students and schizophrenics, although interpretations were clearly psychoanalytic in nature.

Sentence Completion Tasks

Another family of projective techniques involving words are incomplete sentence tasks. These tasks provide a stem that the subject is asked to complete. Many incomplete sentence tasks have established scoring procedures. Sentence completion procedures are widely used in both clinical and research settings. A relatively recent addition to this family is the incomplete sentence task.

Projective Drawing Tests

Another set of projective tests utilizes expressive techniques, where the subject is asked to create something, typically a drawing. In the Draw-A-Person Test, the subject, often a young child, is asked to draw a picture of a person. The child is then asked to tell a story about that person. A similar technique is the House-Tree-Person Test (Buck, 1948), in which the subject draws a house, tree, and person and then creates a story about them. Projective drawing tests are scored on many dimensions, including:

  • Absolute size
  • Relative size
  • Omissions
  • Distortions

If projective test data tend to make more sense without sufficient empirical basis, projective drawing tests are often considered the most problematic.

Neuropsychological Assessment

The field of clinical neuropsychology is a rapidly expanding new area, highlighting the importance of understanding mental disorders of the central nervous system and their treatments. Clinical neuropsychology is defined as a scientific discipline that studies the relationship between behavior and brain functions, encompassing cognitive, motor, sensory, and emotional functions (Schoenberg, Scott, & Springer Link (online service), 2011). Neuropsychologists’ activities include the identification, diagnosis, multifaceted standardization, and treatment of brain and spinal cord diseases. As a multidisciplinary effort, clinical neuropsychology overlaps with neurology, psychiatry, and psychometric testing in several ways:

  • Both neuropsychology and neurology focus on sensation, perception, and motor movements.
  • Both neuropsychology and psychiatry study concrete and transformative aspects in psycho-social situations (Schoenberg et al., 2011).
  • Both neuropsychology and psychometrics utilize psychological tests.

Neuropsychology differs from these other diagnostic subjects because it is finely specialized, focusing on attention, memory, learning, language and communication, spatial integration, and cognitive flexibility. Neuropsychology is a field of study that actively attempts to observe and measure dysfunctional brain activity and related damage to measurable behavioral functions. The study of clinical neuropsychology has benefited from significant progress in neuroimaging. New methods have made it possible to visualize brain diseases in living individuals. Despite these major advances in brain imaging, neuropsychology is often capable of detecting problems missed by even updated neuroimaging equipment.

The roots of clinical neuropsychology can be traced to the 19th-century studies of Pierre Broca and Carl Wernicke. These early investigators identified that functions like speech recognition are localized in the left hemisphere of the brain. Neuropsychological assessment has been used to evaluate specific problems in memory. Clearly, memory is a heterogeneous phenomenon; scientists differentiate between memory systems such as short-term and long-term memory:

  • Short-term memory: Occurs when material is recalled or produced immediately after presentation. Its capacity may be limited; without rehearsal, information can be retained for only a few minutes.
  • Long-term memory: Can be stored for an extended period (more than a few days), and its capacity is very large.

Neuropsychologists are also skilled at identifying which aspects of information processing systems may be impaired. For example, information retrieval and storage are related but distinct functions. Some individuals experience problems recalling or retrieving information.

Developmental Neuropsychology

The study of childhood brain function is extremely important. Neuropsychological problems manifest in speech and reading disorders, commonly known as learning disabilities, which cause significant challenges in young children. Dyslexia, for instance, is a specific reading disorder involving difficulties in decoding single words. This problem may have a genetic basis and can be caused by difficulties in processing phonemes. Developmental neuropsychology is a complex field because it requires evaluation at multiple levels. It employs a seven-step model used by neuropsychologists in developing rehabilitation plans:

  1. Step 1: Use formal tests to determine the nature of the problem.
  2. Step 2: Evaluate the environment, such as school demands and other academic expectations.
  3. Steps 3 & 4: Develop a treatment plan, including estimating short- and long-term outcomes and the likelihood of brain problems and intervention making a difference.
  4. Step 5: Assess the availability of resources (e.g., family support, community facilities, therapists).
  5. Step 6: Develop a realistic treatment plan that considers the information obtained in steps 1-5.
  6. Step 7: Evaluate the progress made during clinical care, even if the neuropsychologist does not directly provide treatment.

Neuropsychologists have many complex and important tasks that require administering and interpreting assessment tools. Developmental neuropsychologists are often called upon to testify in courts of law.

Adult Neuropsychology

There are many different methods for identifying the effects of brain injury in adults. Perhaps the two most well-known methods involve the administration of the Halstead-Reitan and Luria-Nebraska test batteries.

Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery

In 1935, Ward Halstead established a laboratory to study the effects of impaired brain function. Some of Halstead’s observations were formal, while others involved work and social settings. Formal observations were obtained by modifying existing psychological tests. Over time, Halstead realized that a variety of tests were needed to determine brain function inadequacy, measuring characteristics and abilities not targeted by existing psychological tests. The complete Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery is available in different versions for children and adults. A large number of studies validate the Halstead and Reitan procedures (Reitan, 1968). Many studies have shown that performance on specific subtests of the Halstead-Reitan Battery is related to impaired function of one of the two brain hemispheres.

Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery

A different approach to neuropsychological assessment is found in the work of Luria (Luria, 1966, 1973), who has been recognized for many years as an expert on human brain functions. Luria also proposed the concept of pluripotentiality – that any single center in the brain can be involved in various functional systems (Golden, 1981). In practice, Luria clinically applied his theory to make intuitive decisions about deficits in functional systems. Because he did not use standardized procedures, the time he spent testing individuals varied greatly. Although Luria’s procedures are widely considered important, they did not meet the psychological standards of many US psychologists. To address these criticisms, Golden (1981) developed a standardized version of Luria’s procedure. Because Golden worked at the University of Nebraska, the test became known as the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery. The battery includes 269 items that can be administered in approximately 2-4 hours. Items are divided into 10 sub-divisions. The inventory is scored by finding the standardized performance level for each of the 11 subtests. Additionally, three more scores are recorded:

  • Pathognomonic Scale: Contains 32 items found in previous studies to be highly sensitive to impaired brain function.
  • Lateralization Scores: Two scores indicating impaired function in the right or left hemisphere of the brain, derived from sections of the battery that independently test the function of the right or left side of the body.

Personality Test Construction Strategies

Deductive Strategies

Deductive strategies use reason and deductive logic to determine the meaning of test responses. In the logical-content method, test designers select items based on simple face validity; in the theoretical approach, test construction is guided by specific psychological theories.

Logical-Content Strategy

The logical-content strategy, as its name suggests, uses reason and logic in the development of personality measures. In its most common application, the test designer logically attempts to deduce the type of content that should measure the characteristic being evaluated.

Theoretical Strategy

As its name suggests, the theoretical strategy begins with a theory of the nature of the specific characteristic being measured. Similar to the logical-content approach, an attempt is then made to deduce items. In the theoretical approach, however, items must be consistent with the underlying theory.

Empirical Strategies

Empirical strategies rely on data collection and statistical analysis to determine the meaning of test responses or the nature of personality and psychopathology. These strategies retain the self-report features of objective strategies, where subjects are asked to respond to items describing their own views, opinions, and feelings.

Criterion-Group Strategy

The criterion-group strategy begins with a criterion group—a collection of individuals possessing a specific characteristic such as leadership or schizophrenia. The test constructor selects and administers a set of items to all people in this criterion group, as well as to a control group representing the general population. The constructor then attempts to find items that differentiate the criterion and control groups or highlight how the two groups contrast.

Factor Analytic Strategy

The factor analytic strategy identifies the fundamental dimensions of personality using factor analysis. Factor analysis condenses or reduces data to a smaller number of descriptive units or dimensions. Factor analysts begin with an empirical database of a large number of intercorrelated items or tests. They then analyze these intercorrelations, usually to find the minimum number of factors that account for as much variability in the data as possible.

Examples of Logical-Content Strategy Tests

Woodworth Personal Data Sheet

The first personality inventory, the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, was developed during World War I and published in its final form after the war (Woodworth, 1920). Its purpose was to identify military recruits likely to experience combat breakdown. Woodworth’s final form contained 116 questions to which individuals responded”ye” or”no” Items were deduced from a list of known symptoms of emotional disorders and questions asked by psychiatrists in their clinical interviews. Woodworth’s success in solving the problem of mass screening stimulated the development of many structured tests aimed at measuring personality traits.

Early Multidimensional Scales

The Bernreuter Personality Inventory can be used for subjects under 13 years of age and can include items related to six personality traits such as introversion, self-confidence, and sociability. Each was first published in the 1930s and, unlike Woodworth’s single score, produced multiple scores. These multidimensional procedures laid the foundation for many modern tests that yield multiple scores rather than a single overall index.

Mooney Problem Check List

The Mooney Problem Check List, published in 1950, contains a list of problems that recurred in clinical case history data and written statements of problems submitted by approximately 4000 high school students. It is similar to Woodworth in that subjects who check a large number of items are assumed to be experiencing difficulties. The main interpretive procedure is to assume the face validity of the test response. Thus, if a subject checked items related to financial matters, examiners assumed that the person was experiencing financial difficulties.

Criticisms of the Logical-Content Approach

The weaknesses of the logical-content strategy became apparent. By assuming that one can interpret test items at face value, the logical-content strategy also assumes that the subject takes a normal attitude toward the test, follows instructions, reads each item, and answers as honestly as possible. Even if all this is true, the subject may not be able to objectively evaluate their own behavior in the area covered by the test item (e.g.,”I never drink too muc”). And even if the subject can provide accurate self-evaluation, they may not interpret the test items in the same way as the test constructor or test user, which is also an inherent assumption of the logical-content strategy.