The House Imagery Test: A New Measure of Mental Status

Abstract

Imagery Communication Psychotherapy (ICP), a Chinese native psychotherapy, uses imagery as a medium to communicate in depth with clients. As the most essential and widely used imagery in ICP, house imagery had been found efficient to reveal global mental status. On this basis, the House Imagery Test (HIT), a new projective test, was developed. This article reports the development and validation of the HIT on a survey of 478 undergraduate students. Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90), Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), and Trait Coping Style Questionnaire (TCSQ) were used as criterion in the current study. The results showed that the HIT had good test-retest reliability (r = .69) and internal consistency (r = .79). Exploratory factor analysis of the HIT exhibited a 4-factor structure, which was verified by further confirmatory factor analysis. The HIT also correlated significantly with SCL-90, SDS, SAS, PANAS and TCSQ. Overall, the HIT had acceptable reliability and validity. It was proved to be a novel and solid projective test for measurement of mental status. These findings provide a new tool to aid the clinic practice and suggest a new technical route for the development of projective tests.