A Critical Review of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale–Global and Thematic Apperception Test in Clinical Practice and Research: Psychometric Limitations and Ethical Implications.

The Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale–Global (SCORS-G) has been used increasingly in multimethod psychological assessment contexts as a framework for eliciting personality information from narrative data collection techniques, the most popular of which is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Although research on the reliability and validity of the SCORS system has evolved over the last decade, there are numerous psychometric and procedural shortcomings (and corresponding ethical issues) that should be considered when applying this methodology to the TAT in clinical and research settings. Chief among these concerns is a lack of normative benchmarking, variability in TAT card batteries that are administered across contexts (which limit generalization and direct research comparisons), ambiguous reliability and validity evidence (and lack of incremental validity), and redundancy in published studies (i.e., versions of the same data/samples presented repeatedly across research). There is also a dearth of information about how SCORS-G data are influenced by factors such as culture, language, cognitive functioning, and other variables that may impact narrative output, word count, and richness (and subsequent interpretation and clinical decision making). The review concludes with a discussion of the ethical implications of using the SCORS-G in clinical practice, and recommendation for a moratorium on its use until minimum psychometric standards can be established and greater clarity is achieved surrounding its use with diverse and vulnerable populations. Public Significance Statement: The current article presents a critical review of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale–Global (SCORS-G) system as applied to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) in clinical practice and research, and important ethical issues that should be considered. A moratorium on the SCORS-G as applied to the TAT is recommended until minimum psychometric standards can be established, and greater clarity is achieved surrounding its use with diverse and vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]