Culturally Informed Evidence-Based Practices: Temas Assessment of Multicutural Children

From the inception of cross-cultural investigations using projective/narrative tests in the 1940s, it was observed that the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) stimuli (Murray, 1943) had questionable relevance to individuals of different cultures. Hence, culturally sensitive TAT pictures were developed to study such groups as Mexicans Indians, Ojibwa Indians, Southwest Africans, and South Pacific Micronesians (Henry, 1955). The work of Monopoli (1984, cited in Dana, 1986) indicated that culture-specific stimuli were necessary for personality assessment of unacculturated Hopi and Zuni Indians. Such early efforts to provide a culture-specific TAT pictures have been rarely pursued by psychometricians (Costantino, Dana, & Malgady, 2007; Dana, 1986; 2009). Even when they were pursued, their validity has been questioned repeatedly over the past five decades. The TEMAS test was developed as a multicultural alternative to the traditional TAT. TEMAS was conceived from a multicultural perspective, and normed and validated on a variety of ethnic populations across this country and the globe. The test stimuli have most recently been employed to structure a storytelling (narrative) psychotherapeutic treatment modality for Hispanic youngsters.