Projective Research

 Definition

Projective Techniques are indirect and unstructured methods of investigation which have been developed by psychologists and use the projection of respondents for inferring underline motives, urges, or intentions that cannot be secure through direct questioning as the respondent either resist to reveal them or is unable to figure out himself.

Projective techniques are qualitative methods that reach the subconscious of respondents by asking them to interpret information or complete tasks, which circumvent normative responses that create social desirability vias.

Characteristics of the Projective Research

• Lack of test material structure is a prerequisite that different people perceive differently. In response to the unstructured and ambiguous stimulus, subjects are forced to impose or project their own structure, and in doing so, they reveal something about themselves such as needs wishes, conflicts, and Ambiguity.
• Employ a -a wide range of stimuli such as inkblots, incomplete sentences, line drawings, and pictures. No matter what stimuli are selected and used, the examination procedure is set up to ensure the highest degree of ambiguity and is structureless. These unstructured situations are presented to the subject for resolution with the underlying assumption that the handling of this ambiguous task will involve the various aspects of personality make-up and its dynamic structure.
• Projective techniques are indirect in the sense the subject is not aware of the purpose of the test to some extent, i.e., the purpose and intent of projective techniques are disorganized Respondents are also not aware of the relevance and significance of their responses
• Provide more freedom in the choice of responses. It captures the uniqueness of the personality of the respondent.

Main uses of the method

• Projective Research is used by marketing researchers to reveal important connections to brands, products, and services that originate with unconscious biases, attitudes, motivations, and emotions.
• To elaborate a proposal, a plan, a program, or a model as a solution for a practical problem or need of a social group, an institution, or a geographical region in a particular area of knowledge.
• Projective research leads to covering needs based on previous knowledge.
• To refer to the formulation of politics, programs, technologies, methods, or processes.
• It is used in the field to find out how projects could be or how they should be, in terms of the needs, preferences, or decisions of certain human groups.

Advantages of the Projective Research

• Projective techniques are used to give an idea of a personality an individual has.
• The stories told by individuals, as well as the way in which they tell the stories, give hints to the interviewer about the personality a person has, particularly in the spheres of interpersonal relationships and the capability of dealing with psychological stress.
• The needs of an individual both conscious and unconscious can be understood using the projective tests.
• It allows the needs of the person to come out spontaneously without editing these needs. That is why the projective tests represent the most spontaneous outcomes of human behavior.
• It understands all the results of personality reactions. That is why bringing motivational barriers can increase the stake of this projective test hypothesis high.

Disadvantages of the Projective Research

• Highly trained interviewers and skilled interpreters are needed.
• The respondent selected may not be representative of the entire population
• It takes poor diagnostic measurements since researchers only look for an individual’s behaviors instead of symptoms. Because behaviors can be different, even for people with the same diagnosis, there cannot be a single and precise diagnosis.
• The primary disadvantage of employing projective techniques is the complexity of the data; interpretation requires a sophisticated skill set. To effectively employ projective techniques, the researcher must be adept at decoding the data culled from the projective stimuli.