ABSTRACT
Perhaps very few tools and techniques enjoy the controversy that surrounds the use of human figure drawings (HFD) in the psychological assessment literature. With a history of about 100 years the use of human figure drawings in personality assessment has indeed been controversial and conflicting. Comprehensive reviews of the literature concluded that the hypotheses posed by Machover (1949) in regard to the connection of specific signs in the drawings and psychopathology lacked empirical support (Kahill, 1984), while Koppitz’s (1968) scoring system of emotional indicators on children’s drawings failed the test of diagnostic utility in empirical evaluations (Mortensen, 1984). In 1991, we developed the Draw A Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED; Naglieri, McNeish, & Bardos, 1991) in an effort to address a number of criticisms about the use of the HFD technique in psychological evaluations. First, we wanted to address the need for a refined set of scoring rules to increase objectivity in scoring and improve reliability, a serious concern noted in the literature in regards to the DAP procedures (Anastasi, 1988). We addressed this by creating scoring criteria that were objective and easy to score across three drawings of a man, woman, and self and by providing an overall score based on the evaluation of the three drawings. Scoring criteria were selected after a thorough review of the literature in regards to specific items connected to emotional disturbance, yet we selected the final set of items following specific statistical criteria in terms of the frequency of their occurrence in the general population. The general population reference group was operationalized with a nationally representative sample of 2,260 students ages 6 to 17 years old. Next, we wanted to demonstrate that the approach we were proposing could empirically demonstrate its ability to differentiate between normal and clinical populations. We offered such evidence in a series of studies we presented in the technical manual. In one study with a sample of 81 students identified and receiving services in an Ohio school under the “severe behavior handicapped” label we found the clinical sample to perform significantly higher when compared to a control sample. The participants in the study were also matched on a general nonverbal ability test and found no significant correlations between their overall IQ and DAP:SPED total scores. In another study with 49 adolescents who attended a residential psychiatric facility in New York the DAP:SPED significantly differentiated between the two groups as it did with another group of special education children in a Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) setting in a western New York region. Finally, the fourth validity study, involved students who were receiving services at a day school program of the Devereux Foundation, and once again the DAP:SPED Total score significantly differentiated and identified students who were in need of a further psychological evaluation based on their performance on the DAP:SPED Total score.
