T HE accident proneness hypothesis simply stated is that there is a tendency for certain individuals to have repeated accidents. This was postulated to account for the early discovery that sample populations of adult workers included individuals who had more accidents than could be accounted for by chance alone. More recent findings appear to minimize the importance of the statistical evidence for the accident proneness hypothesis (3).If we are willing to accept Cobb's (3) assignment of the variance in accident distributions to both chance and differential liability factors, however, it follows that certain individuals might be included among the high accident group by chance alone, while others are included because of differential liability. There are indications in the clinical literature to suggest that there are individuals who by virtue of special personal characteristics continue to have repeated accidents (4, 5, 6, 13). It is this writer's suggestion that these are the people whom it is necessary to isolate for adequate validation of the accident proneness hypothesis as a clinical concept. King has pointed out:The test of the hypothesis lies in the success or failure to identify causal physiological or psychological characteristics, or their combination, present in individuals showing a high frequency of accidents, and absent or present to a lesser degree in "accident free" individuals with a comparable background of experience (9, p. 374).The present study was an attempt to validate the accident proneness hypothesis as a 1 This paper is a portion o£ a dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology of the University of Rochester in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree. The writer is indebted to Professor G. R. Wendt of the Department of Psychology for advice and assistance throughout the investigation, and to the students, teachers, and principals of the schools in Rochester and Brighton who cooperated to make this study possible. She is also indebted to the Strong Memorial and Municipal Hospital, the Genesee Hospital, the Rochester General Hospital, and the Highland Hospital for the privilege of using their records to select the accident subjects.

Rorschach data for 272 Black children are presented in age groups from 3 to 12. The Rorschach characteristics presented are F+%, A%, Fabulized Combinations, Perseverations, Color Naming, Rejections, Wholes, Details, Small Details (Dd), R, M, and P. Comparisons with Ames and Exner reveal a lower form accuracy level, and a lower percentage of Wholes, with a higher D level. Response rate, rate of development of the M response, rate of development of the P response, and of the Animal response are very similar to the other normative samples.

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15 children with inflammatory bowel disease were given projective tests after initial diagnosis. Analysis of responses suggested affective constriction, abandonment anxiety, and depression. The children were of good intelligence with good object relationships and psychosexual differentiation for their ages. Severe psychopathology and bizarre slippage were absent.