Abstract:
The Goodenough-Harris/Draw a Person Test may be used to estimate developmental status in children from 5 to 17 years of age. Because it is a nonverbal measure of ability, it can be given to children from diverse cultures and to deaf children. Ideally, it should be administered by educators or psychology professionals wither to groups of children or individually. The test is not intended to be used as a stand-alone measure, but as one of a group of individual ability assessments. After recording each child's name, sex, age, and grade on his or her response form, the examiner asks the examinees to draw a an, a woman, and a self-portrait on the designated pages. Scoring is based on 14 criteria such as "arms", "clothing", and "ears", and points are awarded for the presence, level of detail, and proportion of the parts drawn. A simple scoring chart is used to assign points and ambiguities are addressed in the Manual which shows examples of drawings and the scores that were assigned them. In addition, a set of Quality Scale Cards provides ideal samples at each scoring level for reference. Scores are totaled and recorded on the Record Form for each of the three drawings. Raw scores are converted to standard scores and percentiles which are sensitive to the age of the examinee. The test was normed on 2,622 children from across the country and from a variety of racial and ethnic groups. Eleven raters with inter-rater reliability in the mid .90s assessed the sample. Internal consistence was estimated as being in the high .80s using Cronbach's Alpha. The average test-retest reliability coefficient was .74. The validity for the construct "developmental change" was established in the .60s which showed that scores tend to increase with age, as expected in any test of development. Because a slight but statistically significant difference was found between the scores of boys and girls, separate norms by sex are provided. No significant difference was found between blacks and whites. although a slight difference does exist between Hispanics and Non-Hispanics for the age group 15-17.