Development of the Apperceptive Personality Test

Abstract

The rationale for a new, objectively scored apperceptive technique, the Apperceptive Personality Test (APT) is presented. Drawing primarily on the history and experience of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and similar picture-story devices, an eight-card set comprised of stimulus cards depicting recognizable people in everyday settings was developed. An effort was made to portray various combinations of young and old, male and female, and to include persons of minority status. Each card is briefly described and standard administration procedures are presented. Objective scoring is provided by the APT Questionnaire, a six-item format that allows the subject to directly provide codable responses derived from the narrative stories. Computer-assisted scoring procedures are described for a select set of variables. Preliminary findings of some basic psychometric properties of the APT and relations with other standard tests are reported.