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. Therefore, sentence completion technique, with such advantage, promotes the respondents to disclose their concealed feelings. There is debate over whether or not sentence completion tests elicit responses from conscious thought rather than unconscious states. This debate would affect its categorizing as projective tests

1. Decoding Word Association Test 3-
Sentence Completion Test
Compiled by Col Mukteshwar Prasad(Retd),
Mtech(IITD),CE(I),FIE(I),FIETE,FISLE,FInstOD,AMCSI
Contact -9007224278, e-mail –
muktesh_prasad@yahoo.co.in
for book ”Decoding Services Selection Board” and SSB
guidance and training at Shivnandani Edu and Defence
Academy

2. Introduction
•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.
•Therefore, sentence completion technique, with such advantage,
promotes the respondents to disclose their concealed feelings.
• There is debate over whether or not sentence completion
tests elicit responses from conscious thought rather than
unconscious states.

3. Introduction….
•The tests are usually administered in booklet form where respondents
complete the stems by writing words on paper
• Most sentence completion tests are much longer-anywhere from 40 to 100
stems-and contain more themes-anywhere from 4 to 15 topics.
•The structures of sentence completion tests vary according to the
•Length
•Relative generality and
•Wording of the sentence stems.
• Structured tests have longer stems that; less structured tests provide shorter
stems, which produce a wider variety of responses.
•A sentence completion test form may be relatively
•Short(Less Structured)-
•Ued to assess responses to advertisements
• Produce a wider variety of responses.
• Multiple themes can occur in a short test, which gives the examinee
multiple opportunities to reveal underlying motivations about each topic
during data analysis.
• Much longer(Structured), such as those
•Used to assess personality.
•Lead respondents to more specific types of responses

4. History
•Hermann Ebbinghaus (1897) is generally credited with developing the first
sentence completion test used as part of an intelligence test.
•Carl Jung's word association test may also have been a precursor to
modern sentence completion tests.
•The association method was then formalized in the United States by Grace
Kent and Aaron Rosanoff who created a Free Association test.
• Their test differed from Jung’s because it used more everyday and
vague words.
•For example, Jung’s test used mother, father, sex, and work. Kent and
Rosanoff’s test used words like table, dark, music, and man (as opposed
to father)
•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 eighty-fifth most widely
used personality assessment instruments.
• Another reason for the increased usage of sentence completion tests is
because of their superiority to other measures in uncovering conflicted
attitudes.
• Some sentence completion tests were developed as a way to overcome the

5. 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.

6. Examples
•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).
•The current version of this test has three forms at
different levels including High School, College, and Adult.
•The test is scored on a seven point scale with answers
being tagged from a conflict (pessimism, hostility,
hopelessness) to neutral (stereotypes, catchphrases,
cliches) to positive (humor, optimism, acceptance)
rating.
•Miner Sentence Completion Test (measures managerial
motivations).
•Washington University Sentence Completion Test

7. Data analysis, validity and
reliability
 The data collected from sentence completion tests can usually
be analyzed either
 Quantitatively or
 Qualitatively.
 Usually, sentence completion tests can be interpreted in two
different ways:
 Subjective-intuitive analysis of the underlying motivations
projected in the subject's responses, or
 Objective analysis by means of scores assigned to each completed
sentence.
 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 booklet.
 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

8. Administration
 Sentence completion methods are presentations of the
beginning of sentences which then requests that the
subjects complete the sentence any way they would
like.
 This method is based on the idea that it will reveal more
about thoughts, fantasies, and emotional conflicts than
testing with direct questions (Weiner & Greene, 2008).
 Tests are developed to be as vague as possible so the
most amount of projection as possible can occur.
 If the questions or instructions are too clear they will not
promote freedom of expression and the results will say
nothing.
 For example, a sentence beginning with The worst thing
about growing old… is not going to provide as much
opportunity for a response as Other people…. (Holaday,
Smith, & Sherry, 2000).
 Overall they try to eliminate sentences that could possibly

9. Test Method
 Provides Indirect or Direct clues to underlying
attitudes,affects and concerns .These can be either
 Performance Based
 Self report
 Self description
 Some are constructed for use in
 General Personality Assessment
 Clinical Application
 Attitude assessment
 Achievement motivation
 Measurement of other construct
 Example
 Egocentricity, Moral attitude, Marital satisfaction,
Depression

10. Test Method
 Three types of Data
 Structural-Consists of such objective response
characteristics(Time required for test)
 Behavioural-Manner in which people work on sentence
completion task(e.g. careful or careless)
 Thematic-Provides rich array of clues to underlying feelings
and attitudes and concern
 Person’s attitude towards specific individual
 Mother ……..
 Perspective on particular events and cicumstances
 In School…….
 I fear…..
 I get agree when ….
 Men….
 Tomorrow….
 My best Friend…..

11. Sack’s Sentence Completion Test
 It has 60 questions around areas
 Family
 Three types of attitudes(Presumes that even if subject becomes
cautious or evasive at least one of the four items in each area will
reveal significant response)
 Mother
 Father
o I feel that my father seldom works.
o If my father would do better.
o I wish that my Father is dead.
o I feel that my father is good..
 (This attitude is interpreted as “Extreme hostility and
contempt or overt death wish.)
 Family Units
 Sex
 Interpersonal Relationship
 Self Concept