Conceptual Relationships Between Test Protocols and Clinical Report

Summary

A content analysis of 60 psychological reports was made and compared with the conceptual content of the TAT protocols and the sentence completion tests used as sources for the reports. The conceptual categories for each document were rank ordered by percentage of use, and comparisons among documents were made using rank order correlations. Results: (a) frequent conceptual content in any set of protocols was mirrored by relatively frequent use of the same content in the report; (b) the report writers did not show systematic bias; (c) conceptual content in TATs and sentence completion tests overlapped; (d) the intended use of the reports influenced their content; and (e) reports used significant amounts of information from the protocols.