The Effects of Stem Length and Directions on Sentence Completion Test Responses
The sentence completion tests are semi-structured projective techniques for the respondents, with the beginning sentences which known as “stems”. The respondents will complete the sentences, with the answers that they think and feel appropriate for the given situation or scenario. The respondents’ responses are considered indications of the respondents’ attitudes, beliefs, motivations and other mental states of the individuals who fill up the sentence completion tests. A sentence completion test form may be short, like used to evaluate responses to advertisements. It can be also longer, which is used in personality evaluation. In this relation, a long sentence completion test is the For Sentence Completion Test which consists of 100 stems. The tests are typically administered in booklet form. The respondents have to complete the stems by writing words on paper. In addition, the structured tests have longer stems, for the respondents to respond more specifically to the given situations. The less structured tests provide shorter stems, which provide various responses. In the past decades, sentence completion tests have grown widely in usage; because they are easy to develop and easy to administer form of tests. In 1980s, sentence completion tests were among the seventh most widely used in personality assessment instruments worldwide. Plus the fact that it has high standard in measuring the conflicted attitudes and behaviors of the people. In some cases, sentence completion tests were developed in order to overcome the problems related to thematic apperception measurement. The sentence completion tests include personality analysis, clinical applications, attitude assessment, achievement motivation and measurement of other cases. Most of them are used in several studies and disciplines such as psychology, management, education and marketing. In the same manner, it also measures projected applications like intelligence tests, language comprehension and language-cognitive development tests.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_completion_tests)
Moreover, there are many sentence completion tests available in the field of research. First is the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank, which evaluates personality traits of people. It is the most widely used sentence completion test among others. Second is the Miner Sentence Completion Test, which measures managerial motivations. Third is the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, which measures ego development of a person. Correspondingly, the data collected from sentence completion tests are typically analyzed through quantitative or qualitative research. Based on the survey, 18 % of psychologists used Rotter (1951) incomplete sentences blank with children, while 32 % of them used it with adolescents and 47 % of them used it with adults. And, the most common reason of using SCT is because it easily determines personality structures of the respondents. This research instrument is also an extension of the free-word association test. Several studies reveal that SCT is very useful in assessing OGM, a known vulnerability marker for human depression. Equally important is the revelation that this personality assessment instrument is used significantly to represent a potentially evaluation of OGM case in non-clinical individuals. This also helps to prevent other people who are at risk of depression. This tool is proven useful for those individuals who have tendencies to recall past events in the general perspective. More than that, the data gathered in different studies also showed that the level of depression of any person can be measured with the use of SCT.
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3045000995.html)
On the other hand, the use of Sentence Completion can measure the mental skills of the students, the way they answered the SCT form. Similarly, a precise understanding of the specific-item-feature combinations that signal particular skill requirements can help the examiners to configure out the clear evidence about the students’ underlying mastery probability skills. And, this study also targets the following areas for improvement among the students. The SCT helps the students to improve their vocabulary, as well as it provides them deeper understanding about the effects of specific feature-manipulations. In the same way, it also offers them various solution strategies to every analytical problem they encounter. At the same time, SCT helps students to have deeper analytical views regarding mental representations of various ideas and information through different types of sentence-completion items constructed by the evaluators. Likewise, reading comprehension skills are very important factors in order to attain high score in this kind of test. And, some techniques can be developed for sentence-completion tests. Students must pay attention to the item-stimulus properties that give signal to the examinees on what skills they have to use for solving the items. Above all, the cognitive skills must be developed among students in answering different types of sentence-completion tests in school. This is an effective way of determining individual strengths and weaknesses of the students, the way how they divulge information on a given problem, situation or issue.
(http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658210701390982#preview)
References:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_completion_tests)
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3045000995.html)
(http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658210701390982#preview)
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