TheDraw-a-Person Test: Validity Properties for Nonbiased Assessment

Abstract

Among man's earliest attempts to communicate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, drawing became one of the first means of creation and forms of expression. While the study and analysis of children's drawings historically had been of interest to philosophers and educators, the work by Cooke (1885) and other pioneer child psychologists was instrumental in identifying developmental stages in children's spontaneous drawings. Later, the work of Thorndike (1931) and Goodenough (1926) culminated in the development of assessment techniques allowing for more systematic research on children's intellectual and personality development. Interest in children's drawings, including their application in therapy and psychoeducational appraisal, has remained strong. The notion that children's drawings reflect their intellectual development, not just their visual-motor skills, laid the foundation for the development of the Draw-A-Person Test (DAP; Goodenough, 1926). Early research suggested that the scale was useful for assessing children between the ages of 4 and 13. Furthermore, results indicated that although the characteristics measured by the scale were unrelated to children's artistic talents (Goodenough, 1926), they were related to children's ages (Goodenough, 1926); gender (girls scoring higher than boys [Goodenough, 1926] or boys scoring higher than girls [Dennis, 1942; Menzel, 1935]); social class (middle-class children scoring higher than low socioeconomic children [Adler, 1970; Coles, 1967; Georgas & Georgas, 1972]); and racial-ethnic characteristics (Anglos scoring higher than blacks [Lindler, 1962] or Anglos scoring higher than Mexican Americans [Manuel & Hughes, 1932]). Furthermore, the scale was found to be economically administered and scored by persons with minimal training. Machover (1949) and others popularized the DAP as a projective method of personality assessment, and Buck (1948) extended its use to the House, Tree, Person test. Finally, extension and revision of the 1926 DAP under the title of Harris-Goodenough Test of Psychological Maturity (Harris, 1961) further emphasized the usefulness and popularity of examining children's drawings as an expression of their body and self-images and as a reflection of their conceptual development. Beyond these more obvious applications, the DAP has assumed special relevance as a test of intelligence. Thus, studies of its relationships with the Stanford-Binet (Birch, 1949; Estes, Curtin, DeBurger, & Denny, 1961; Goodenough, 1926; Lindler, 1962; McElwee, 1932; McHugh, 1945; Pringle & Pickup, 1963), the WISC (Pringle & Pickup, 1963), and Thurstone's Primary Mental Ability Tests (Vane & Kessler, 1964) report correlations in the low .40s with a few studies reporting correlations in the mid .70s. Correlations between the DAP and children's school achievement (Goodenough, 1926; Koppitz, Sullivan, Blyth, & Shelton, 1959; Vane & Kessler, 1964) also generally fall in the mid .40s to low .50s.