RISB

Introduction

The incomplete sentence blank is an attempt to standardize the sentence completion

method for use at the college level. Forty sentences are given to be completed and

then matched with manuals. A scale from 0 to 6 is then assigned to the response of

the subject.

Author

J. B. Rotter and J. E. Raferty

Year

1950

History

The incomplete sentence blank consist of 40 items revised from a form used by Rotten

and Wileman in the army. This form was in turn a revision of blanks used by Holzberg

at the Mason General Hospital.

Test Material

Test comprises of 40 incomplete sentences. Each statement is provided with a stimulus

Word. The current version of this test has three forms at different levels including High

School, College and Adult.

Administration Procedure

The sentence completion method of studying personality is a semistructured projective

technique in which the subject is asked to finish a sentence for which a first word is supplied.

It is assumed that the subject reflect on wishes, desires, fears and his attitude in this sentence.

Objective and Rationale

The incomplete sentence blank is an attempt to standardize the sentence completion method for

the usage at college level. One aim is to provide a technique which could be used objectively for

screening and experimental purposes. A second goal was to attain information of rather specific

diagnostic value for treatment purposes.

Scoring and Interpretation

Sentence completion are scored from example in the scorin manuals assigning a numeric weight
for 0 to 6 for each sentence. Overall these are the scoring principles :Omission responses, Conflict

responses, Positive responses, Neutral responses and the scoring manuals.

The sentence completion can be interpreted from a corner sense point of view or at symbolic

Psychoanalytic level. The kind of material obtained by the RISB is similar to that obtained by the

TAT.

PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES

The item of Incomplete Sentence Blank were divided into two halves. This yielded a correlated

Split– half reliability of. 84 when based on records of 124 male college students and. 83 when

based on the record of 71 female students. Inter-scorer reliability for 2 set of scores trained by

the author was. 91 when based on 50 male records and. 96 for female records. The correlation

between the two sets of scores was. 90

Validity

The ISB was validated on groups of subjects which did not include any of the cases used in

developed the scoring principle and scoring manual Validity data was obtained for two sexes

separately since the scoring manual differs the sexes in scoring. The subjects included 82

females and 124 males who were classified as either adjusted or mal adjusted. A cutting

score of 135 provided a very efficient separation of adjusted and mal adjusted students in

the data. The ISB correlated 0.53 with the judge’s rating and 0.40 with a Money Problem

Check List. Biserial correlation between the final ISB scores and treated and untreated

groups was 0.50 since the tests were scored blindly by someone who was not aware that

the subject was an experimental cause. The results suggest a significant relationship between

scores in ISB and current rating of judges.

Norms

A distribution of scores on the RISB for a representative college freshman population was

obtained by giving the RISB to 299 entering freshman at Ohio state university. There was

no reason to believe that the sample of 299 was in any way a typical of the much larger

total freshman class. A comparison between the median percentile rank on the Ohio state

and the psychological examination of the sample and of the total freshman population

showed a difference of approximately two percentile points. The agreement between

Corresponding first and third quartile points were also very close. It was interesting to find that

the correlation coefficient between the psychological examination scores and RISB scores for

the selected freshman sample was only 0.11.This is accord with the general feeling that very

little relationship would exist between intelligence and scores on a personality measure such

as the incomplete sentence blank.

Reference

Rotter. J. B. Raferty, J. E. (1950).The Rotter’s Incomplete Sentence Blank. New York :

Psychological Corporation.