Definition
Draw-a-person tests are intended to assess intelligence or psychopathology by having an individual draw a human figure during a short period of time and then interpreting the drawing in accordance with a scoring system.
History and Current Status
These tests are part of the rich history of psychological assessment dating to at least Florence Goodenough’s Draw-A-Man Test of 1926. Numerous surveys of psychological practitioners have documented that various iterations of these measures have enjoyed widespread popularity to this day for assessing children’s intelligence and child and adult psychopathology (Lilienfeld et al. 2000). Other widely used and cited examples of the basic technique include Machover’s (1949) scoring system for human figure drawings, the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test (1963), Koppitz “emotional indicators” scoring system for children’s human figure drawings, Naglieri’s (1988) Draw-A-Person: A Quantitative Scoring System (DAP:QSS), and Reynolds and...
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References
Abell, S. C., Von Briessen, P. D., & Watz, L. S. (1991). Intellectual evaluations of children using human figure drawings: An empirical investigation of two methods. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 52(1), 67–74.
Abell, S. C., Wood, W., & Leibman, S. J. (2001). Children’s human figure drawings as measures of intelligence: The comparative validity of three scoring systems. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 19(3), 204–215.
Aikman, K. G., Belter, R. W., & Finch, A. J. (1992). Human figure drawings: Validity in assessing intellectual level and academic achievement. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 48(1), 114–120.
Harris, D. B., & Goodenough, F. L. (1963). Goodenough-Harris drawing test. San Antonio: Pearson.
Imuta, K., Scarf, D., Pharo, H., & Hayne, H. (2013). Drawing a close to the use of human figure drawings as a measure of intelligence. PloS One, 8(3), 1–8.
Kamphaus, R. W., & Pleiss, K. L. (1991). Draw-A-Person techniques: Tests in search of a construct. Journal of School Psychology, 29(4), 395–401.
Lilienfeld, S. O., Wood, J. M., & Garb, H. N. (2000). The scientific status of projective techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 1(2), 27–66.
Machover, K. (1949). Personality projection: In the drawing of a human figure. Springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher.
Naglieri, J. A. (1988). Draw a person: A quantitative scoring system. San Antonio: Pearson.
Rae, G., & Hyland, P. (2001). Generalisability and classical test theory analyses of Koppitz’s scoring system for human figure drawings. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 71(3), 369–382.
Reynolds, C. R., & Hickman, J. A. (2004). Draw-A-Person intellectual ability test for children, adolescents, and adults. Austin: PRO-ED.
Willcock, E., Imuta, K., & Hayne, H. (2011). Children’s human figure drawings do not measure intellectual ability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110(3), 444–452.
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Kamphaus, R.W., Kurtz-Nelson, E. (2017). Draw-a-Person Tests. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_892-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_892-1
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