Dec
What are the Research Findings on Projective Tests?
Many students appear to be reading about Projective and Objective tests used in psychology. So today’s post provides a collection of links that focus on this topic. Some of the papers are old~ they are still rich in information to help you write your paper. Here I provide a brief outline of the study and highlight interesting features. In a future post I will choose one older article and show you how to harvest good quality information to use in your essays.
For now, enjoy~
Projective Techniques: An International Perspective (1992)
Although this research is quite old, it still has something to share. The paper reviews four surveys on clinical tests used in the USA, Japan, the Netherlands and Hong Kong. It was concluded that projective tests are popular in the clinical setting across these cultures. An interesting realisation was that projective tests highlight the language barriers inherent in standardized objective tests.
Scores on objective and projective tests were used to predict a dependency-behavior (e.g., dependant personality traits). It was interesting, I think, that they found the validity or coefficients for the projective tests to be larger than that of the objective. It was concluded that research into underlying dependency needs would best be suited to projective testing.
This paper looks at the personality-occupational fit of airmen in the USA. The research question was: Are airmen who are referred for psychological assessment characteristically different from the airmen who are not referred? Using the Rorschach, the results showed that referred airmen were more likely to be rigid or compulsive in character formation., or to have increased inhibition. In contrast, the control group tended to be adaptive, have to have controlled emotional responsivity, anxiety levels an response times. It was concluded that projective personality tests should be included in the recruitment of air force personal to reduce attrition, lower training costs and to enhance personality-occupational fit for better health of those in the air force.
What do you think of these findings?
From your reading of the articles, what other interesting results did you find?
