Effects of maximum performance instructions on the sentence completion test of ego development

This modified replication of Jurich and Holt's (1987) test-retest study investigated the stability of scores on the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT; Loevinger, 1985; Loevinger and Wessler, 1970; Loevinger, Wessler and Redmore, 1970) across alternate instructional formats. Initially, 90 adult participants completed the SCT using standardized instructions. After a 1-week interval participants were readministered the SCT based on random assignment to either a standardized instruction (control) group, a role-play instructional set, or a best-effort instructional set. A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance yielded statistically significant differences in ego level scores across the 3 instructional sets. The differences in ego level scores were approximately one-half level higher for the role-play and best-effort instructional sets. Effect sizes for the experimental instructional sets ranged from .23 using item sum scores to .45 using total protocol ratings. Results are supportive of Jurich and Holt's (1987) findings, indicating that the standardized instruction SCT may be susceptible to the motivational set of the test-taker.