Draw-A-Person Test

The '''Draw-A-Person Test''' ('''DAP''' '''DAP test''' or '''Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Person Test''') is a psychological projective test|projective personality or cognitive psychological testing|test used to evaluate children and adolescents for a variety of purposes

History

Dr DB Harris first proposed this test as a measurement of intellectual maturity in 1963 and its popularity grew over the next few decades

Uses

One common use of the DAP test is as a rough evaluator of IQ and cognitive ability Clinicians who use the test claim that the amount of details that a child puts into the drawing compared to others of a similar age can be used (among other factors) to evaluate the child's intelligence However older children upper- or middle class children children with mainstreamed education and other populations have too much of an advantage over others in this test which severly stunts its ability to evaluate intelligenceTer Laack de Goede & Aleva (2005) However many clinicians favor the use of the test because of its low reliance on language fluency and for the fact that the child is not given a tight time limit which allows children with more laid back personalities to complete the task at their own pace
Some psychological practitioners use the DAP test as an evaluation of a child's level of emotional disturbance or to investigate their potential history of sexual abuse However there is no empirical basis for doing so, and the figure a child draws has little or no connection to abuse history or to their level of emotional distrubance Williams Wiener & MacMillan (2005)

Nature of the test

Depending on the clinician administering the test the child is instructed to draw between one and three figures (sometimes they are a man a woman and him or herself) The child has fifteen minutes to do so without the interference of the clinician When used as a cognitive test it is then scored according to one of a few available scoring procedures [1] When used as a personality test or a test of emotional disturbance the clinician often uses his or her own impression of the drawing and what it may mean

References