SACKS’ SENTENCE COMPLETION TEST

NATURE OF THE TEST

Dr. Joseph M. Sacks and other psychologist of the New York Veterans Administrative Mental Hygiene Service developed a sentence completion test designed to obtain significant clinical material in four representative areas of adjustment namely: • family • sex • interpersonal relationship • self-concept

It has felt that items included in this test present sufficient opportunities for the subject to express his attitudes so that clinical psychologist may infer his dominant personality traits/trends. Such information is useful in screening patient for therapy, which gives clues to content and dynamics of patients’ attitudes and feelings.

NATURE OF THE SCALE FAMILY The family area included three sets of attitudes namely: a) those towards mother, b) father, and c) family unit. It is hoped that even when the subject becomes evasive or cautious, at least one of the four items in each area will reveal significant response.

SEX The sex area includes attitudes towards woman and heterosexual relationship. The 8 items in this area allows the subject to express himself with regards to woman, towards marriage, and with respect to sexual relationship.

INTERERSONAL RELATIONSHIP The area of interpersonal relationship includes attitudes towards friends and acquaintances, colleagues at work or school, superior at work or school, and people supervised. The 16 items in this area affords the subject to express his feelings towards those.

SELF-CONCEPT The area of self-concept includes fear, guilt feelings, goals and attitudes towards one’s own ability, concept of himself as he is, he was and as he hopes to be. There are 24 items included in this area.

SCORING AND INTERPRETATION A rating sheet has been advised for the SSCT which brings together under each attitude, the four stimulus item and the subject’s responses to them.

For example:

Attitude towards Father items: 1. I feel that my father seldom works. 16. If my father would do better. 31. I wish that my father is dead. 46. I feel that my father is no good. Those four responses are considered together and interpretative summary is made that crystallizes the clinician’s impression of the subjects’ attitude towards in this area. In this case, the summary stated: “Extreme hostility and contempt or overt death wishes” A rating is made of the subject’s degree of disturbance in this area according to the following scale:

2 - SEVERELY DISTURBED Appears to require the therapeutic aid in handling emotional conflicts in this area. 1 – MILDLY DISTURBED Has emotional conflict in this area but appears able to handle them without therapeutic aid. 0 – No Significant disturbance rated in this area X – Unknown, Insufficient evidence

Sacks and Levy feel that it is more desirable to point out areas of disturbance and determine these through a constellation of response. The validity of the rating is dependent of course upon the clinical background of the examiner as well as upon materials produced by the subject.

The following are the summaries and ratings of the individual attitudes and outlines presented for a general summary of the SSCT findings. This includes the following:

1. Statement of those areas in which subject shows the most disturbed attitudes. This may provide significant clues for therapist. 2. A description of the interrelationships between attitudes with respect to content. This often illuminates dynamic factors in the case.

Certain influences on the subject’s personality structure case be made on the basis of the SSCT, such as: 1. The subject’s manner of response to impulse from within or to stimuli from the environment. 2. The subject’s nature of response to stress –impulsive or well-controlled. 3. The subject’s thinking content: realistic, artistic, and fantastic.

Interpretation Guide

Attitude towards Mother (14, 29, 44, 59) 2 = Completely rejects and depreciates mother whom he considers over demanding. 1 = Sees mother’s fault but accepts and tolerates differences. 0 = express only positive feelings towards the mother.

Attitude towards Father (1, 16, 31, 46) 2 = feels extreme hostility and contempt with overt death wishes. 1 = admires father but wishes that their relationship were closer. 0 = expresses complete satisfaction with father’s personality.

Attitude towards Family Unit (2, 27, 42, 57) 2 = feels rejected by the family which lacks solidarity and which has constantly contended with difficulties. 1 = aware that the family does not recognize him as a mature person but has no difficulty in relating with them. 0 = instability of the family domicile has had little effect on his favorable feeling towards them.

Attitude towards Women ( 10, 25, 40, 55) 2 = extremely suspicious, possible homosexual tendency 1 = high ideas but ambivalent feelings. 0 = only minor or superficial criticisms

Attitude towards Heterosexual Relationship (11,26,41,56) 2 = appears to have given up achieving good sexual adjustment 1 = deserved sexual experiences but reservation about his ability to maintain marital relationship. 0 = indicates satisfaction towards this area

Attitude towards Friends and Acquaintances (8,23,38,53) 2 = suspicious and apparently seclusive 1= seems to wait approval of others before committing himself emotionally 0 = express mutual relationship with friends and self

Attitude towards People Supervised (4,19,34,58) 2 = feels he can handle or control hostility in handling others 1 = feels capable of doing good supervisory but has misgivings about assuming an authoritarian role. 0 = feels controllable and well accepted by subordinates.

Attitude towards Supervisors at work or School (6,21,36,51) 2 = resents or fear authority 1 = mild difficulty in accepting difficulty 0 =

Attitude towards Colleague at work/school (13,28,43,58) 2 = feels rejected by colleagues, and condemns them 1 = has some difficulty at work and depends on colleagues 0 = expresses good mutual feelings

Fear (7,22,37,52) 2 = disturbed by the apparent fear of loving, possibility to control his feelings 1 = fear of self-assertion which is fairly common and not pervasive. 0 = lack of fear

Guilt Feelings (15,30,45,60) 2 = concerned with spiritual feeling and physical sex drives 1 = has regret over past and seems mildly disturbed by his failure to control his trouble. 0 = does not seem to be aware of guilt feelings

Attitude towards Own Ability (2,7,32,47) 2 = feels completely incompetent and hopeless 1 = feels he has a specific ability but tends to fear difficulty 0 = confident on his ability to overcome obstacles

Attitude towards Past (9,24,39,54) 2 = feels rejected and isolated 1 = 0 = feels well adjusted, no significant disturbance in the past

Attitude towards the Future (5, 20, 35, 50) 2 = pessimistic, no hope in his own resources for happiness and success 1 = unsure of himself but tries to be optimistic 0 = seems confident in achieving his goals

Goals (3, 18,53,49) 2 = lack of motivation for achievement 1 = desires material things for family as well as for himself 0 =

History
Herman Von Ebbinghaus is generally credited with developing the first sentence completion test in 1897.[1] Ebbinghaus’s sentence completion test was used as part of an intelligence test.[2]

Carl Jung’s word association test may also have been a precursor to modern sentence completion tests.

In recent decades, sentence completion tests have increased in usage, in part because they are easy to develop and easy to administer. As of the 1980s, sentence completion tests were the seventh most widely used personality assessment instruments.[3]

Another reason for the increased usage of sentence completion tests is because of their superiority to other measures in uncovering conflicted attitudes.[4]

Some sentence completion tests were developed as a way to overcome the problems associated with thematic apperception measures of the same constructs.[2]

Uses
The uses of sentence completion tests include personality analysis, clinical applications, attitude assessment, achievement motivation, and measurement of other constructs. They are used in several disciplines, including psychology, management, education, and marketing.

Sentence completion measures have also been incorporated into non-projective applications, such as intelligence tests, language comprehension, and language and cognitive development tests.[5]

Examples of sentence completion tests
There are many sentence completion tests available for use by researchers. Some of the most widely used sentence completion tests include:

Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (assesses personality traits; perhaps the most widely used of all sentence completion tests).
Miner Sentence Completion Test (measures managerial motivations).
Washington University Sentence Completion Test (measures ego development).
Data analysis, validity and reliability
The data collected from sentence completion tests can usually be analyzed either quantitatively or qualitatively.[6]

Sentence completion tests usually include some formal coding procedure or manual. The validity of each sentence completion test must be determined independently and this depends on the instructions laid out in the scoring manual.

Compared to positivist instruments, such as Likert-type scales, sentence completion tests tend to have high face validity (i.e., the extent to which measurement items accurately reflect the concept being measured). This is to be expected, because in many cases the sentence stems name or refer to specific objects and the respondent is provides responses specifically focused on such objects.

References
^ Rhode, A.R. (1957) The Sentence Completion Method. New York: The Ronald Press 1957; Lah, M.I. (1989). Sentence Completion Tests. In C.S. Newmark (Ed.), Major psychological assessment instruments, Vol II (pp 133-163). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
^ a b Ibid.
^ Holaday, M., Smith, D.A. & Sherry, A. (2000). Sentence completion tests: A review of the literature and results of a survey of members of the society for personality assessment. Journal of Personality Assessment, 74, 371-383.; Lubin, B., Larsen, R.M. & Matarazzo, J.D. (1984). Patterns of psychological test usage in United States: 1935-1982. American Psychologist, 39, 451-454.
^ Lawrence C. Soley & Aaron Lee Smith (2008). Projective Techniques for Social Science and Business Research. Milwaukee: The Southshore Press.
^ Ibid.
^ Ibid.

Sentence completion tests are a class of semi-structured projective techniques. Sentence completion tests typically provide respondents with beginnings of sentences, referred to as “stems,” and respondents then complete the sentences in ways that are meaningful to them. The responses are believed to provide indications of attitudes, beliefs, motivations, or other mental states. There is debate over whether or not sentence completion tests elicit responses from conscious thought rather than unconscious states. This debate would affect whether sentence completion tests can be strictly categorized as projective tests.

A sentence completion test form may be relatively short, such as those used to assess responses to advertisements, or much longer, such as those used to assess personality. A long sentence completion test is the Forer Sentence Completion Test, which has 100 stems. The tests are usually administered in booklet form where respondents complete the stems by writing words on paper.

The structures of sentence completion tests vary according to the length and relative generality and wording of the sentence stems. Structured tests have longer stems that lead respondents to more specific types of responses; less structured tests provide shorter stems, which produce a wider variety of responses.