Interpretation of Drawings

Children's drawings, such as the House-Tree-Person (HTP) and Kinetic Family Drawings, as well as free drawings, which are often used in assessing possible sexual abuse, are subject to the same criticisms as the dolls (Underwager and Wakefield, 1990; Wakefield and Underwager, 1988a, 1989, 1994c). The assumption is that the drawings of children who have been abused will differ from those of nonabused children. Qualitative features of the drawings, such as the colors used, the size and detail of body parts, and the shape of the figures may be used to support the claim of abuse.

Drawings lack validity and reliability as projective assessment devices. In a review of the Draw-A-Person test in the Seventh Mental Measurements Yearbook, Harris (Buros, 1972) notes that there is very little evidence for the use of "signs" as valid indicators of personality characteristics. There is so much variability from drawing to drawing that particular features of any one drawing are too unreliable to say anything about them. Reviews by Cundick and Weinberg in the Tenth Mental Measurements Yearbook, (Buros, 1989, pp. 422425), support the consistent finding that interpretations of drawings (as are often done in forensic evaluations) are not supported by data. Both reviewers note that there are no normative data establishing reliability and validity of the Kinetic Drawing System.

Another type of drawing often used in interviews and evaluations of children is an outline of the back and the front of a boy or a girl. The child is shown the outline and instructed to put an X where he or she was touched. There is no research on this technique. It may give the child the message: "You were touched, now show me where." The use of booklets with outline drawings is essentially a programmed text that teaches the child to focus on genitalia and produce statements about sexuality.

There are serious problems with the few studies which claim to find differences between the drawings of abused and nonabused children. For example, Hibbard et al. (1987) concluded that, since five abused children but only one nonabused child in their samples had genitalia in their drawings, genitalia in drawings is an indicator of possible sexual abuse. But the drawings were obtained by different people for the abused and the nonabused groups and no information was given about how often the abused children had been interviewed about abuse. In addition, the differences between the groups were not statistically significant.

In summary, as with the anatomical dolls, there are no data establishing that the drawings can be used diagnostically to substantiate sexual abuse.