An evaluation of the Harris revision of the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test

Abstract

PROBLEMIn 1963, Harris in his book on Children's Drawings(2) published a revision and re-evaluation of the Goodenough Draw-a-Man Test. The revision consisted mainly of adding 22 new scoring categories to the original 51 categories developed by Goodenough and in devising a Draw-a-Woman Scale which paralleled the Drawa-Man Scale. He presented two separate scoring systems, one for the Man and one for the Woman. I n addition, Harris developed a Quality Scale by which an I& for the Draw-a-Man and Draw-a-Woman Tests might be derived froin comparison with 12 quality plates. Harris(2) admitted, however, that "the saving in time by using the Quality scale is accompanied by an appreciable reduction in accuracy of measurement."This study investigated whether the method of scoring the Draw-a-Man Test, including the use of the additional categories devised by Harris, was significantly better than the Goodenough method of evaluating the same test. The directions used by Harris for the Draw-a-Man Test are the same as those used by Goodenough so it was felt a meaningful comparison could be made. PROCEDURE836 Draw-a-Man Tests drawn by white and Negro girls and boys ranging in age from 5 through 7 years were taken from the files of several New York school districts. These drawings had been administered as part of routine classroom testing situations and had been scored by the Goodenough scoring method by the various psychologists who had administered the tests. All of the children whose drawings were selected for study had been given individual Stanford Binet intelligence tests by school psychologists as part of the school program. Although a number of these children had been tested because they were school problems, the majority included in the sample came froni classrooms where the Binets had been routinely administered as part of an educat,ional and intellectual assessment project being conducted in the various schools.All 336 drawings were scored by the Harris method by a single psychologist. The first 30 drawings were rechecked by another psychologist to make sure no deviation from the Harris method occurred. The original Goodenough scoring done by the school psychologists was not changed.

Measuring intelligence with the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test.

“…Greater differences in the scores of boys and girls on the DAM were found in the two studies investigating this variable (Sells, 1966;Vane, 1967). Boy/ girl differences on the DAM ranged from about 1 to about 11 standard score points; sex differences on the GH ranged from approximately 1 to less than 3 standard score points.…”

“…Goodenough DAM standard deviations 3 to 5 standard score points greater than GH Man scale deviations were observed in three of four studies assessing this variable (Levine 6 Gross, 1968;Phillips et al, 1973;Sells, 1966;Vane, 1967). Greater differences in the scores of boys and girls on the DAM were found in the two studies investigating this variable (Sells, 1966;Vane, 1967).…”

Validity of Preschoolers' Self-Drawings as an Index of Human Figure Drawing Performance

“…In some studies, DAPT performances were positively correlated with IQ (e.g., Dunn, 1967;Durrett, 1972;Johnson & Johnson, 1971;Tramill, Edwards, & Tramill, 1980;White, 1979). Other studies and reviews, however, reported conflicting evidence (Lehman & Levy, 1971;Scott, 1981;Vane, 1967). Only one study (Croake, Keller, & Catlin, 1973) compared all three (man, woman, and self) human figure drawings with WPPSI performance; the results of that study, which indicated that the man drawing correlated more highly with IQ performance than did the other two figure drawings, are inconsistent with other reports (Harris, 1963;Milkovitch & Landry, 1983;Scott, 1981).…”

The Draw‐a‐man Test: A Study of Scoring Methods, Validity and Norms With English Children at Five and Eleven Years

“…Sinha (1970) reports a wide range of correlations between the Harris Scale and a number of group measures of verbal and non-verbal ability. The correlations with Stanford-Binet in Tables 2 and 3 are similar to those reported from America (Vane, 1967); and from South Africa, Strumpfer and Mienie (1968) reported a correlation of 0-54 with an individual intelligence test among children of average age 11-4 yr. Pringle and Pickup (1963), who gave the Goodenough test to 37 English school children each year from 7-to 10-years of age, obtained correlations with StanfordBinet in the range 0-11-0-37. American studies reporting relationships between these measures (Estes et al, 1961;Thompson and Finlay, 1963;Vane and Kessler, 1964;Muzerkari, 1967) have generally used samples with a narrower range of ability and a less restricted age range than the present study.…”