Toward an Objective Evaluation Procedure of the Kinetic Family Drawings (KFD)

Abstract

The feasibility of employing a quantitative scoring procedure for evaluating the Kinetic Family Drawings (KFD) was examined. A quantitative scoring procedure was developed from the clinical hypotheses Burns and Kaufman (1970, 1972) to score 21 measurable KFD styles, actions, and characteristics. The scoring procedure was employed to evaluate 116 KFDs obtained from four groups of boys to determine the effectiveness of the procedure to differentiate among two levels of emotional adjustment and the two levels of age. The results indicated that four of seven sets of extracted component scores significantly differed between the emotionally well-adjusted and the emotionally disturbed groups. One set of component scores significantly differed between the younger and the older groups, while two sets of component scores did not differ among any of the four groups. The KFD total score was found to differ significantly only between the young emotionally disturbed and the young emotionally well-adjusted groups. It was concluded that a quantitative scoring procedure for the KFD is feasible.