Indian Personality, Education, and Administration Research: Hopi Study, 1942-1944

The Indian Education, Personality, and Administration Research was initiated in 1941 by the United States Department of the Interior and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The project was set up as a joint project of the United States Office of Indian Affairs and the University of Chicago's Committee on Human Development. The aim of the project was to study Native Americans as individuals and as tribal societies in order to discover how the Indian Service's long-range policies and programs might be made more effective in improving Indian welfare. Six tribes were selected to be in the project: Hopi (2 communities), Navaho (3 communities), Papago (2 communities), Sioux (3 communities), Zia (1 community) and Zuni (1 community). The personalities of a random sample of children (ages 5-18) was studied in the context of the social systems of each of the 12 communities. Life histories and the emotional, mental, and physical development of the selected children were studied by means of participant observation, interviews, medical examinations, and a battery of cross-cultural psychological tests of the projective, guided interview and performance types. The battery included the Arthur Point Performance Scale (short form); Goodenough's Draw-a-Man Test; Stewart's Emotional Response Test (adapted); Bavelas' test of Moral Ideology; Piaget's Immanent Justice (adapted); Free Drawings; Murray's Thematic Apperception Test (adapted); and Rorschach's Inkblot Test. The Murray Research Archive holds partial data for the Hopi portion of the project. The Murray Archive has copies of the Record Form for Tests Given by Field Workers for all Hopi participants (N=190, 102 girls and 88 boys). This form contains Stewart's Emotional Response Test, Bavelas' test of Moral Ideology, Piaget's Immanent Justice, and the Rules of Games. The Murray Archive also holds some transcripts of interviews with mothers, forms completed by the children regarding their friends and family, and some observations by Laura Thompson. The remainder of the Hopi data and the data from other tribes are archived at the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution.