Projective Testing on Children - Advantages of Different Techniques So many different factors are involved in prediction of how a child might grow up, what his or her proclivities will be, and whether that child will be predisposed to violence. Often, cultural and socio-economic conditions will play a huge role. For instance, a child who has been beaten by a father is more likely to beat his own children or his spouse. Or, a child growing up in a dangerous, crime-infested inner-city neighborhood is likely to follow in the footsteps of the wrong role models.

But over the years, several tests grounded in various hard and social sciences like psychology, psychiatry, biology, economics, sociology and political economy have emerged to offer credible projective testing for children.

Lawrence Frank set the stage for projective testing in 1939: "When people try to understand vague or ambiguous unstructured stimuli, the interpretation they produce reflects their needs, feelings, experience, prior conditioning, thought processes." (Frank, 1939). The main challenge is, which particular needs, feelings, prior conditioning and thought processes are and should be relevant in projective testing? Experts from various disciplines tried to answer that very question mainly during the 1940s through 1960s, the psychoanalytical era.

This paper will explore several of those methods, distinguishing between them and discussing relative strengths and weaknesses.

The most famous of these tests is the Rorschach test. By far, the Rorschach test is the most widely used of the projective tests. In a 1971 survey of test usage, it was used in 91% of clinical trials. (U. Alberta) The Rorschach tests uses inkblots to measure several indicators of a child's proclivities.

In 1857, Kerner revealed that people can make idiosyncratic or revealing interpretations and these interpretations may be used to judge and measure personality. But it was not until 1911 that Herman Rorschach suggested that inkblots can be used to reveal these interpretations. At first the test was ill-received, but as we all know, its legacy lives on today.

Essentially, the stimuli were generated by dropping ink onto a card and folding it. The cards selected are not random: Originally, 10 were hand-selected by Rorschach from the thousands he had created.

The test itself is administered with as little information and instruction as possible. Usually, the tester will...

To minimize the effect that the testers' facial expressions may have on the test takers, the testers may sit beside the test takers.
Both the orientation of the card and the subject's response are recorded for later interpretation. The cards are shown twice, the first time just for identification and the second time for elaboration.

After plugging the responses into a number of determinative factors, the testers and interpreters will score the test. However, there is no hard and fast quantitative way to score the Rorschach test; rather, the scoring is almost entirely qualitative.

The traits the Rorschach test is meant to measure are:

Passive Receptive Direction (passivity, receive tendency)

Oral Aggressive Direction (primitive aggressive impulses conjoined with incorporation or fear of oral aggressive attack, pertinently deprivation of oral aggression

Anal Direction (liking or disliking of feces, defecation, dirt, disorder, disease, bacillus, imperfection, mistakes; defiance/attraction to destruction, soil/dirty)

Sadistic Direction (also the fear from inner sadistic impulses)

Masochistic Direction

Theme of Authority (power; high society status; submission; defiance to authority)

Infantilism

Weakness, insufficient (also fear from weakness)

Fear, anxiety

Paronodity

Sex-identity disorder (men) (feminine traits)

Sex-identity disorder (women) masculine traits)

Emotional Tone

Centrum, 1999, (http://www.centrum.fss.muni.cz/Scenotest/text/ROR.pdf)

The strengths of the Rorschach test are that it is very simple to administer and that it is widely recognized as a valuable progressive test. The primary weakness of the test is that it is so qualitative and not quantitative. Also, another weakness is the social conditions that have changed since the test's inception rendering some of the testing areas moot today.

The House-Tree-Person Test was developed by John Buck: "The House-Tree-Person (H-T-P) projective technique developed by John Buck was originally an outgrowth of the Goodenough scale utilized to assess intellectual functioning. Buck felt artistic creativity represented…