ABSTRACT

The Need-Threat Analysis (NTA) is a scoring system developed for the Children’s Apperception Test (CAT), which addresses concerns of reliability and validity while providing clinically relevant information on sources of perceived stress in a child’s life. It is proposed as a method of systematically evaluating children’s emotional status when conducting a comprehensive psychological evaluation of a child. The NTA is not meant to replace the more traditional content analysis of CAT stories but to supplement the information gathered with a reliable method of identifying the needs and threats that are most meaningful to the child whose life is the subject of clinical study.