Children’s Self-Report and Projective Inventory (CSRPI)

The CSRPI is an individually administered tool developed to assess the inner world of children ages 5-12. It was developed to enrich clinicians’ understanding of childrens’ thoughts, feelings, self-perceptions, concerns, fantasies, defenses and strengths. The CSRPI consists of 8 components which include self-report and projective tasks. The CSRPI components can be used in their entirety to get a complete picture of a child’s psychological functioning or selectively, to address specific concerns. Since it is designed to provide information about the child’s internal processes it is well suited for use as a complement to informant rating scales of external behaviour.

The CSRPI material include:

Projective Story Cards

12 gender specific projective cards portray children in relevant solitary, family, school and peer situations. The sets of cards are identical, except for the portrayal of the main character as male or female. A unique feature of the cards is the blank face of the main character. This enhances the child’s opportunity to truly project his or her own thoughts and feelings by decreasing the stimulus pulls of the cards. The predominant themes are:

Wishes, wants, needs fantasies

Parental or sibling relationships

Thought and feelings

Feelings about family

Family interactions

Relationship with mother

Relationship with father

Thought and feelings about school

View of teacher and self as a student

Drawing and Coloring Tasks

Reveal feelings about self and others by asking a child to color how he or she feels and how others make him or her feel. The child is first instructed that colours represent different feelings. An innovative “Draw a child in the rain” task can be used as a nonverbal measure of perceived stress and adaptation. A family drawing is also included.

Critical Items

40 items tap significant clinical concerns. The clinician reads the items and the child indicates his/her answer option on the   card provided. Following the child’s response , the clinician place a check in the appropriate space in the workbook.

Perceived Competence

30 items assess strengths.

Sentence Completion

40 new items include family and school themes.

Interpretation Guidelines

Include 20 clinical dimensions to focus your interpretations.