The Sliding Person Test--A Non-Verbal Measure of Self-Esteem.

The Sliding Person Test (SPERT) is a nonverbal measure of self-ideal discrepancy. The original test was a wooden manipulative which Joseph S. Karmos designed in order to pursue the 1962 conclusions of John Shlien, that even at a high level of abstraction, self-esteem is not without and it is more related to the unique and personal items which an individual consciously uses to describe himself than to the conventional concrete items which are usually intended for groups of people. Informal use in classrooms from kindergarten to high school levels indicated its potential value as a counseling tool. Evidence of convergent and discriminant validity of a pencil and paper version of SPERT was found in a study of 200 college students. Contrary to expectations, a U-shaped relationship was found between SPERT discrepancy and emotional adjustment. Highly self-accepting individuals with large self-ideal self discrepancies scored higher on measures of adjustment and social desirability, lower on a measure of anxiety than did less highly self-accepting individuals with large discrepancies. (Author/BW)