Citation

Joiner TE, Schmidt KL, Barnett J. J. Pers. Assess. 1996; 67(1): 127-141.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Society for Personality Assessment, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1207/s15327752jpa6701_10

PMID

8683422

Abstract

This study examined the reliability and validity of three commonly used indicators of emotional distress in children's projective drawings--size, detail, and line heaviness--and assessed their relation to established objective and projective measures of childhood depression and anxiety. Participants were 80 child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients (53 boys, 27 girls; ages 6 to 16; M = 10.69, SD = 2.94). Although the present results indicated that these drawing indices can be assessed with very high reliability, they were not significantly associated with self-report or thematic projective measures of depression and anxiety. Age and defensiveness did not moderate the relation between the drawing indices and the non-drawing measures of emotional distress. The patterning of the intercorrelations among and within the drawing indices, projective stories, and self-report measures indicated greater support for the self-report measures, in terms of convergent and discriminant validity. This study did not support the continued use of these three projective drawing indices of emotional distress.

Language: en