Performance of Blind Vocational Rehabilitation Clients on the Purdue Pegboard

For many years the Purdue Pegboard (PPB) has been part of the battery of tests which is used at the New York Association for the Blind (NYAB) in the vocational evaluation of blind men and women. In 1953, Gertrude Bigmanl made a study of the PPB test performance of 345 legally blind clients. The test proved to be useful in recommending prevocational training and in predicting adaptabiliry to the training programs offered at the NYAB. It was less reliable in predicting success at power sewing machine operation. Scores for the test population as a whole were lower than those for the seeing induscrial applicants reported in the PPB test manual (1948). In generalizing somewhat from her data, Bigman reported that, for the placing of pins, the 95th percentile for blind clients approximated the 50th percentile for seeing industrial applicants and that the 50th percentile for the blind fell below the first percentile for the seeing. A better showing was made on assembly where spatial orientation seemed to be less of a problem. According to her visual criteria, Bigman's test population was divided into three groups. Group 1 included those with some degree of usable vision (from approximately 5/200 up to and including 20/200 with optimum correction in the better eye). In Group 2 were those who had been totally blind, or who had not more than 5/200 vision for the greater part of their lives. Those in Group 3 were more recently totally blinded. She found chat on the whole, clients with some vision did better than those who were totally blind, and that those who were most accustomed to functioning without useful sight (Group 2 ) did better than those whose blindness was more recent (Group 3 ) . Other evaluators have reported on the use of the PPB with blind clients (Curtis, 1950; Dishart, 1959; Hoffman, 1958; Rothschild, 1959). A criticism of its use has been made by Mary Bauman (1946), who dropped che PPB from her battery because she felt it made too heavy demands in the way of spatial orientation. There seems to be no doubt but that spatial orientation does play a role in reducing the scores of blind people, since the scores are based solely on speed of performance. If used in actual industrial placement procedures, this test could give a false impression of what an applicant's potential might be after a reasonable period of on-the-job work experience. However, clients seeking training at the NYAB are not ready for induscrial