Ring Trials for Handwriting Analysis. An Instrument for Qualitative and Quantitative Method Validation
MSc. Claudia Caspers
Handwriting expert, Handwriting Interlab Platform, Munich, Germany
DOI:
In Chernov, Y., & Nauer, M. A. (Eds.). (2018). Handwriting Research: Validation & Quality. P. 69-93.
Abstract
In the overall discipline of handwriting analysis, its users and customers need a method with which qualitative, semi-qualitative, and quantitative handwriting psychology evaluations are secured. Evaluations of handwriting signs and personality traits through handwriting analysis need to be identifiable with an acceptable level of precision so as to constantly determine the validity and be kept track of for building a scientific basis over time. This method should have its basis in the principle of complementarity.
Along with the presentation of the ring trial method used in handwriting analysis and its background, examples of the first research findings are shown. These form a basis for the evidence of method reliability, self-checking, and the building of data collection. The results so far are based on the analysis of handwriting signs as well as the use of different evaluation methods of handwriting psychology and the use of non-handwriting psychological examination methods, which can be both of a qualitative and quantitative nature.
Ring trials are not only essential in the training and further education of handwriting psychologists (continuous need for self-checking of users of the method) or as proof of the reliability of methods by scientific-objectifying research approaches. In the sense of the complementary paradigm, the instrument of ”ring trial in handwriting analysis“ also opens the space for research methods, which serve on the one hand to investigate the processes of recognition of handwriting signs and the associated attributions of psychological meaning to them, and on the other hand to understand the psychological meanings of cognitive-emotional processes within the writers themselves. Complementary ring trials thus provide the discipline of handwriting analysis with a set of scientific questions and research methods as well as paradigmatic problem-solving. Therefore ring trials can contribute to the re-establishment of handwriting psychology as a scientific discipline that reflects the dual nature of mankind.