The Word Association Test and Psychodiagnostic Appraisal

Abstract

Summary In contrast with the traditional use of word-association tests, in this study subjects were asked to respond to the stimulus words with their first thoughts and feelings in sentence form. The effectiveness of this method for psychodiagnostic appraisal is demonstrated by a matching experiment in which detailed personality reports based solely on the word-association sentences were compared with similar reports prepared independently from other clinical data. Of the three psychologists matching the reports, two correctly matched all 20 pairs, while the third did so with 15. The meaningfulness of the responses obtained by this approach is illustrated by a detailed case study.