Completion norms for 40 three letter word stems

Examined completion responses for 40 3-letter word stems (e.g., ABO) produced by 100 undergraduates. Data include a list of the different words that were written as stem completions, their frequency of occurrence as completions, and their frequency of occurrence in English according to published norms. Analyses revealed 3 primary factors that determined overall performance on a stem-completion test: word frequency, word length, and meanings per word. Usually, however, only 1 of these factors made a significant contribution to performance. It is suggested that results can be used as a database for selecting target words for the construction of completion tests. The entire list of completion responses is appended.