Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory

Abstract

The Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory (WPI), also historically known as the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, is recognized as the first standardized personality inventory developed in psychology. Commissioned during World War I (WWI) by the U.S. Army, its primary function was to efficiently screen large numbers of military recruits for psychological vulnerabilities, particularly susceptibility to shell shock or neurosis. The scale utilized a straightforward self-report, Yes/No format consisting of 117 questions covering various symptoms of emotional instability, maladjustment, phobias, and physical complaints related to anxiety. Although never formally implemented before the end of WWI, the WPI established the foundation for modern objective personality assessment and subsequent clinical screening instruments.

Keywords

Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory, personality assessment, psychoneurosis, shell shock, military screening, Robert S. Woodworth, WWI, psychological testing, emotional stability.

Authors

Robert S. Woodworth

Purpose

The original purpose of the Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory was highly practical and urgent: to identify individuals among mass cohorts of military recruits who were deemed psychologically unfit for service due to high neurotic tendencies. The military sought a rapid, objective method—unlike time-consuming individual clinical interviews—to predict which soldiers might break down under the stress of combat, thereby reducing the incidence of debilitating war neuroses. The WPI was designed to quantify subjective symptoms, providing a numerical score indicative of potential maladjustment.

Following WWI, the scale found broader application in clinical settings and academic research. Psychologists utilized the WPI to study differences between normal and maladjusted civilian populations, paving the way for the use of self-report inventories in educational, industrial, and clinical psychometrics. Early studies, such as those by Schneck (1927) and Papurt (1930), focused on its utility as an instrument of differential diagnosis in civilian psychiatric contexts.

Construct

The WPI measures a general construct of psychoneurotic tendencies or emotional maladjustment. It is not designed to diagnose specific mental illnesses according to modern classification systems (like the DSM), but rather to identify patterns of symptoms and behaviors historically associated with neurosis. The items tap into four broad areas:

• Somatic Symptoms: Physical complaints related to stress, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and bodily discomfort (e.g., headaches, dizziness, heart palpitations).
• Phobias and Obsessions: Irrational fears, anxieties related to specific situations (e.g., crowds, heights, enclosed spaces), and intrusive or compulsive thoughts.
• Social and Childhood Adjustment: Questions regarding shyness, difficulty making friends, family relationships, and behavioral problems during youth.
• Morbid Subjective Experiences: Feelings of unreality, paranoia, loss of memory, or suicidal ideation.

The total score reflects the accumulation of these maladaptive responses, with higher scores suggesting greater emotional instability and risk of psychological breakdown.

Validity

Given its historical context, the validity of the WPI was primarily established via criterion validity. The initial criterion used for item selection was whether a symptom was reported significantly more frequently by soldiers already diagnosed with neurosis or severe emotional problems than by soldiers deemed psychologically normal. The 117 items included in the final version were those that successfully differentiated these two groups.

Later studies confirmed that the WPI scores correlated moderately well with clinical judgments of maladjustment. However, critics noted that the scale was susceptible to faking, particularly in military or clinical settings where respondents might intentionally exaggerate or minimize symptoms. Despite these limitations by modern standards, the WPI demonstrated foundational construct validity by successfully measuring a unitary dimension of psychological distress, providing empirical evidence that personality traits could be assessed quantitatively.

Reliability

Early reports on the reliability of the Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory generally showed acceptable, though not high, internal consistency and test-retest stability for its era. Since the measure was intended for rapid screening rather than precise diagnostic classification, its reliability standards were modest. The Yes/No format, while efficient, limited the nuanced measurement capabilities available in later scales using Likert formats.

The scale’s reliability was crucial for its use in mass testing, ensuring that the results were generally consistent across different administrations and groups of recruits. The robustness of the WPI allowed it to serve as a reliable baseline for developing more complex and psychometrically sound instruments in the decades that followed.

Factor Analysis

Formal, sophisticated factor analytic techniques were not available or widely applied at the time of the WPI’s creation (1917). The scale was constructed based primarily on clinical intuition and empirical item differentiation. However, subsequent researchers attempted factor analysis on the WPI and its various revisions (like the scoring keys developed by Papurt in 1930). These analyses often suggested that the WPI was not purely unidimensional but rather measured several related clusters of symptoms, including:

• General Nervousness/Anxiety
• Somatic Complaints and Physical Fears
• Social Introversion and Shyness
• Obsessive-Compulsive Tendencies

While the overall score provided a general index of psychoneurotic status, the clustered nature of the items confirmed that the inventory covered a wide spectrum of maladaptive behaviors and feelings, anticipating the multidimensional scales that would characterize later personality tests.

Instrument

Test Type: Objective Screening Inventory / Historical Personality Inventory

Format: Self-report questionnaire with 117 items requiring a dichotomous (Yes/No) response.

Language Available: Primarily English (original version).

Population Group: Military Recruits, later adapted for general civilian use and clinical populations.

Age Group: Adults (typically 18+)

Population Details: Originally standardized on American military personnel during WWI. Scoring typically involves counting the number of responses indicative of neurosis (the maladaptive answer key).

Test Methodology: Group administration; paper-and-pencil format. Scoring is objective and rapid, relying on a simple tally of psychoneurotic responses.

Keywords

Psychological screening, neurosis, emotional instability, maladjustment, self-report, dichotomous response, historical psychology, WPI, personality assessment instrument.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not Applicable (Pre-dates ORCID system)

Affiliation Email addresses: Not Applicable (Historical figure)

Correspondence Address: Not Applicable (Historical instrument, primary author: Robert S. Woodworth, Columbia University)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions and Fee: As a historically significant instrument developed for government use during WWI and published over a century ago, the original Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory is generally considered to be in the public domain.

Test Year: 1917 (Development started); 1919 (Formal Publication/Dissemination).

Reference’s

• Schneck‚ Maximilian R. (1927). The Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory as an Instrument of Differential Diagnosis.
• Papurt‚ M.J. (1930). “A study of the Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory with suggested revision”. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology‚ 25(3)‚ 335-352.
• Uehling‚ H. F. (1934). Comments on a suggested revision of the Woodworth psychoneurotic inventory. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology‚ 28(4)‚ 462-467.
• The original instrument can be found online at: http://personality-testing.info/tests/WPI.php

Items of the Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

YES‚ NO

1. Do you usually feel well and strong?
2. Do you usually sleep well?
3. Are you often frightened in the middle of the night?
4. Are you troubled with dreams about your work?
5. Do you have nightmares?
6. Do you have too many sexual dreams?
7. Do you ever walk in your sleep?
8. Do you have the sensation of falling when going to sleep?
9. Does your heart ever thump in your ears so that you cannot sleep?
10. Do ideas run through your head so that you cannot sleep?
11. Do you feel well rested in the morning?
12. Do your eyes often pain you?
13. Do things ever seem to swim or get misty before your eyes?
14. Do you often have the feeling of suffocating?
15. Do you have continual itchings in the face?
16. Are you bothered much by blushing?
17. Are you bothered by fluttering of the heart?
18. Do you feel tired most of the time?
19. Have you ever had fits of dizziness?
20. Do you have queer‚ unpleasant feelings in any part of the body?
21. Do you ever feel an awful pressure in or about the head?
22. Do you often have bad pains in any part of the body?
23. Do you have a great many bad headaches?
24. Is your head apt to ache on one side?
25. Have you ever fainted away?
26. Have you often fainted away?
27. Have you ever been blind‚ half-blind‚ deaf or dumb for a time?
28. Have you ever had an arm or leg paralyzed?
29. Have you ever lost your memory for a time?
30. Did you have a happy childhood?
31. Were you happy when 14 to 18 years old?
32. Were you considered a bad boy [or girl]?
33. As a child did you like to play alone better than to play with other children?
34. Did the other children let you play with them?
35. Were you shy with other boys [or girls]?
36. Did you ever run away from home?
37. Did you ever have a strong desire to run away from home?
38. Has your family always treated you right?
39. Did the teachers in school generally treat you right?
40. Have your employers generally treated you right?
41. Do you know of anybody who is trying to do you harm?
42. Do people find fault with you more than you deserve?
43. Do you make friends easily?
44. Did you ever make love to a girl [or boy]?
45. Do you get used to new places quickly?
46. Do you find your way about easily?
47. Does liquor make you quarrelsome?
48. Do you think drinking has hurt you?
49. Do you think tobacco has hurt you?
50. Do you think you have hurt yourself by going too much with women [or men]?
51. Have you hurt yourself by masturbation (self-abuse)?
52. Did you ever think you had lost your manhood [or womanhood]?
53. Have you ever had any great mental shock?
54. Have you ever seen a vision?
55. Did you ever have the habit of taking any form of “dope”?
56. Do you have trouble in walking in the dark?
57. Have you ever felt as if someone was hypnotizing you and making you act against your will?
58. Are you ever bothered by the feeling that people are reading your thoughts?
59. Do you ever have a queer feeling as if you were not your old self?
60. Are you ever bothered by a feeling that things are not real?
61. Are you troubled with the idea that people are watching you on the street?
62. Are you troubled with the fear of being crushed in a crowd?
63. Does it make you uneasy to cross a bridge over a river?
64. Does it make you uneasy to go into a tunnel?
65. Does it make you uneasy to have to cross a wide street or open square?
66. Does it make you uneasy to sit in a small room with the door shut?
67. Do you usually know just what you want to do next?
68. Do you worry too much about little things?
69. Do you think you worry too much when you have an unfinished job on your hands?
70. Do you think you have too much trouble in making up your mind?
71. Can you do good work while people are looking on?
72. Do you get rattled easily?
73. Can you sit still without fidgeting?
74. Does your mind wander badly so that you lose track of what you are doing?
75. Does some particular useless thought keep coming into your mind to bother you?
76. Can you do the little chores of the day without worrying over them?
77. Do you feel you must do a thing over several times before you can dr‎op it?
78. Are you afraid of responsibility?
79. Do you feel like jumping off when you are on a high place?
80. Are you troubled at night with the idea that somebody is following you?
81. Do you find it difficult to pass urine in the presence of others?
82. Do you have a great fear of fire?
83. Do you ever feel a strong desire to go and set fire to something?
84. Do you ever feel a strong desire to go steal things?
85. Did you ever have the habit of biting your finger nails?
86. Did you ever have the habit of stuttering?
87. Did you ever have the habit of twitching your face‚ neck or shoulders?
88. Did you ever have the habit of wetting the bed?
89. Have you ever been unfaithful to a girl [or boy]?
90. Are you troubled with shyness?
91. Have you a good appetite?
92. Is it easy to make you laugh?
93. Is it easy to get you angry?
94. Is it easy to get you cross or grouchy?
95. Do you get tired of people quickly?
96. Do you get tired of amusements quickly?
97. Do you get tired of work?
98. Do your interests change frequently?
99. Do your feelings keep changing from happy to sad and from sad to happy without any reason?
100. Do you feel sad or low-spirited most of the time?
101. Did you ever have a strong desire to commit suicide?
102. Did you ever have St Vitus’s dance [Sydenham’s chorea —you would know]?
103. Did you ever have convulsions?
104. Did you ever have heart disease?
105. Did you ever have anemia badly?
106. Did you ever have dyspepsia [indigestion]?
107. Did you ever have asthma or hay fever [allergies]?
108. Did you ever have a nervous breakdown?
109. Have you ever been afraid of going insane?
110. Has any of your family been insane‚ epileptic‚ or feebleminded?
111. Has any of your family committed suicide?
112. Has any of your family had a drug habit?
113. Has any of your family been a drunkard?
114. Can you stand the sight of blood?
115. Can you stand pain quietly?
116. Can you stand disgusting smells?
117. Do you like outdoor life?