Award Date

1-1-1979

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Educational Foundations and Counseling

Number of Pages

66

Abstract

Problem. Because of the implementation of public laws regarding the right of all handicapped children to a free and appropriate public education, school psychologists have experienced an increasing demand to provide accurate and timely psychoeducational assessment. In particular there is increased focus on the diagnosis of emotional disturbance and the need for the development and/or validation of instruments which can reliably measure this handicapping condition. It is also extremely advantageous to be able to determine whether the emotional disturbance is chronic or transitory so that appropriate educational programming can be developed. This study investigated one aspect of the Kinetic Family Drawing, an instrument which purports to measure through actions, styles and symbols in children's drawings, the prevailing emotional climate of the child rendering the drawing; One style in particular was examined. The authors of the Kinetic Family Drawing contend that lining at the bottom of the paper is often associated with stress within the child's family and also appears frequently in children's drawings where parents are in the process of divorce; Procedures. The parents of third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade children in a suburban elementary school were asked for permission to have their children render a Kinetic Family Drawing. They were also asked to participate in the study if required. A total of 46 drawings was obtained. The drawings were grouped by the presence or absence of the drawing style being examined. Grouping was accomplished by the independent evaluation of three school psychologists who regularly use the instrument in their practice. Two groups of nine couples each were identified and were administered the Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test; The Locke-Wallace scores were analyzed using Analysis of Variance. The analysis was made between husbands, wives, and couples in the two groups; Findings. The Analysis of Variance showed no significance at the .05 level, indicating that, based on this criterion, lining at the bottom of the paper does not indicate family maladjustment. However, the mean scores for husbands, wives and combined couples were, in each case, lower in the group whose children exhibited the drawing style being studied; Conclusions. This study did not find a significantly greater degree of marital maladjustment in the group of parents whose children line the bottom of the paper in their Kinetic Family drawings. The stress which these children may be revealing symbolically could come from many other intra family dynamics.

Keywords

Drawings; Family; Indicators; Instability; Kinetics; Marital; Stress

Controlled Subject

Educational tests and measurements

File Format

pdf

File Size

2129.92 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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