1. The Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Man Test
Nature
Nurture
“...a child draws what he knows, rather than what he sees…”
“...the drawings made by young children have an intellectual rather than an aesthetic origin.”
The Goodenough-Harris
Draw-A-Man Test
Child Growth and Development Research Study
by Sara Smith

2. Florence Laura Goodenough
Born in Pennsylvania in 1886
Youngest of 9 siblings
Home schooled, earned equivalent of high school degree
Devoted her life to her work and never married or had children
Died in 1959; “In her latter years, despite failing vision, she maintained a courageous spirit and a lively interest in her profession.” - Dale B. Harris

3. Goodenough’s Professional Accomplishments
Earned a Bachelor of Pedagogy degree from Millersville Pennsylvania Normal School in 1908; earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees from Columbia in 1920 and 1921
Earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1924
While studying at Columbia, Goodenough was the director of research for Rutherford and Perth Amboy, New Jersey public school systems
Worked at the Minneapolis Child Guidance Clinic
Professor at the University of Minnesota until retirement in 1947
She held many positions throughout her life, including President of the Society for Research in Child Development and secretary for the Division on Childhood and Adolescence of the American Psychological Association

4. Preliminary Analysis and Development of Draw-A-Man Test
100 drawings selected on basis of age-grade classification
Drawings observed “to determine what characteristic changes take place in children’s drawings with increasing age and intellectual development”
Characteristics defined objectively, artistic effects entirely disregarded
Rough scale of about 40 points devised
Various points were rejected and added, resulting in Goodenough’s final 51-point scale
Goodenough began collecting children’s drawings from Perth Amboy, New Jersey public schools while working as a director of research in Nearly 4,000 drawings were collected from children in kindergarten through fourth grade. These drawings were made under essentially the same conditions as those outlined in the final, revised test procedures.

5. Dale B. Harris: Revision of Goodenough’s Original Scale
Student of Goodenough at the University of Minnesota
Harris offers a revision of Goodenough’s original scale and an extension of the Draw-A-Man Test - “adding to the drawing of a man a drawing of a woman and a drawing of the self”
Further explores the term “intellectual maturity”

6. Intellectual Maturity
“By intellectual maturity is meant the ability to form concepts of increasingly abstract character. Intellectual activity requires: (1) the ability to perceive, i.e., to discriminate likenesses and differences; (2) the ability to abstract, i.e., to classify objects according to such likenesses and differences; and (3) the ability to generalize, i.e, to assign an object newly experienced to a correct class, according to discriminated features, properties, or attributes. These three functions...comprise the process of concept formation.”
Piagetian influence

7. My Research Questions
Is there a correlation between percentile rankings of children’s standardized test scores and percentile rankings for intellectual maturity as measured by the Draw-A-Man Test?
Do percentile rankings on the Draw-A-Man Test predict percentile rankings on standardized test scores?
What are the differences in the percentile rankings of boys versus those of girls with respect to the Draw-A-Man Test?
Are the differences in the percentile rankings among boys and girls on the Draw-A-Man Test similar to the differences in the percentile rankings among boys and girls on standardized test scores?

8. Boys and Girls
Goodenough also mentions school statistics in relation to gender: “School statistics have almost invariably shown that girls, on the average, make more rapid progress through the grades than boys.”
So…
Do girls do better than boys on the Draw-A-Man Test?
Do girls do better than boys on standardized tests?
In Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings, Goodenough discusses the differences in girls’ and boys’ rankings on the Draw-A-Man Test. She notes, “the girls rank somewhat higher than the boys at all ages except twelve, and that the variability of the boys is on the whole slightly greater than that of the girls.”

9. Participants and Procedures
Each student was given a sheet of manilla drawing paper and access to a variety of colored pencils. (The children were allowed to use one pencil at a time, bringing the pencil back to the pile to get another one.)
Each child’s sheet of paper was labeled with his or her respective letter, as assigned to each participant on the school administrator’s master list.
The children were given the instructions to “make a picture of a man, work carefully and make the best picture that you can.” The children had a little over 10 minutes to complete their drawings before they were instructed to hand them in.
The participants in my study were third and fourth graders from a small, Catholic school in Irving, Texas.
13 children participated in my study. Of the 13 students that participated, there were 7 boys and 6 girls.
Of the 7 boys, 5 were third graders (8 years old) and 2 were fourth graders (9 years old).
Of the 6 girls, 2 were third graders (8 years old) and 4 were fourth graders (9 years old).

10. Scoring Procedures
Each drawing was scored according to the Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Man Scale. There are 72 items that are considered in each drawing. One point is credited for each item fulfilled in a drawing. If the item is not fulfilled, no point is credited. The sum of the points credited to each drawing is the raw score. The raw score is then converted to the standard score. Tables 32 and 33 in Harris’ Children’s Drawings as Measures of Intellectual Maturity are used to find the standard score by the child’s age and raw score. After the standard score is determined, it may be converted to a percentile rank (Table 40, Harris).

11. Examples of Items on the Draw-A-Man Scale...
Head present Any clear method of representing the head. Features alone, without any outline for the head itself, are not credited for this point.
3. Neck, two dimensions Outline of neck continuous with that of the head, of the trunk, or of both. Line of neck must “flow” into head line or trunk line. Neck interposed as pillar between head and trunk does not get credit unless treated definitely to show continuity between neck and head or trunk or both, as by collar, or curving of lines.

12. 31. Shoulders I Full Face: A change in the direction of the outline of the upper part of the trunk which gives an effect of concavity rather than convexity. The point is scored rather strictly The ordinary elliptical form is never credited, and the score is always minus unless it is evident that there has been a recognition of the abrupt broadening out of the trunk below the neck which is produced by the shoulder blade and the collar bone. A perfectly square or rectangular trunk does not score, but if the corners have been rounded, the point is credited.
Profile: The scoring should be somewhat more lenient than in full-face drawings, since it is more difficult to represent the shoulders adequately in the profile position...

13. My Research Data Percentile Ranking Groups Group I 75-100 percentile
Group II percentile
Group III percentile
Group IV percentile

14. There is little to no correlation shown between girls’ Draw-A-Man and standardized test score percentile ranks.
There is also little to no correlation shown between boys’ Draw-A-Man and standardized test score percentile ranks.

15. Due to the small number of participants, it is difficult to determine whether or not there is any correlation between Draw-A-Man Test score percentile rankings and standardized test score percentile rankings. The boys seemed to have scored slightly higher on the Draw-A-Man Test. The girls seemed to have scored slightly higher on standardized tests.

16. The lowest Draw-A-Man Test score was made by Student I: a female fourth grader, ranked in Group III (25-49 percentile) for standardized test scores. Student I is ranked in Group IV (0-24 percentile) for Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a percentile rank of 18.
Raw Score: 24
Standard Score: 86

17. Second and third lowest scored Draw-A-Man Tests
Left: Female fourth grader, ranked in Group I for standardized test scores. Ranked in Group III for Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a percentile rank of 25.
Right: Male third grader, ranked in Group I for standardized test scores. Ranked in Group II for Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a percentile rank of 50.

18. The highest Draw-A-Man Test score was made by Student E: a male third grader, ranked in Group I ( percentile) for standardized test scores. Student E is ranked also in Group I for Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a percentile rank of 99.
Raw Score: 51
Standard Score: 148

19. Second and third highest scored Draw-A-Man Tests
Left: Male fourth grader, ranked in Group III for standardized test scores. Ranked in Group I for Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a percentile rank of 96.
Right: Female third grader, ranked in Group I for standardized test scores. Ranked in Group I for Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a percentile rank of 88.

20. Conclusions
The data collected in this study suggests that standardized test score percentile ranks are unpredictable by Draw-A-Man Test score percentile ranks.
The data also suggests that, while there may be some slight differences in boys’ and girls’ Draw-A-Man and standardized test score percentile ranks, it is necessary to perform this study with a larger participant group to gather more sufficient data.

21. Limitations Time Materials Classroom setup Number of participants
If I did this study over again, I would look for at least 20 participants, 10 boys and 10 girls all in the same grade or equally distributed into two grades. I would dedicate more time to scoring the drawings and putting my collected data into clear and helpful graphs and charts.

22. Works Cited
Goodenough, F. L. (1926). Measurement of intelligence by drawings. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY,
Chicago: World Book Company.
Harris, D. B. (1963). Children's drawings as measures of intellectual maturity: A revision and
extension of the Goodenough Draw-a-Man test. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Harris, D. B. (1959). Florence L. Goodenough, Child Development, 30,

23. My personal favorite drawing…“Fell” with a heart balloon.
Male third grader, ranked in Group II for standardized test scores and Draw-A-Man Test scores, with a Draw-A-Man percentile rank of 55.