Youthful ideas about old age: an analysis of children's drawings

Youthful ideas about old age are investigated by means of an analysis of children's drawings of young and old people. The age of the artists ranged between ten and a half years and eleven and a half years of age, and each artist drew four pictures (a young woman, an old woman, a young man, and an old man). Analyses consisted of a content analysis of drawings; the calculation of standard scores by means of the Harris-Goodenough Draw-A-Person (DAP) test scoring procedure (in order to effect comparisons of scores within each child's corpus of drawings); and measurement of the height of each drawing. The content analysis suggested a greater degree of stereotyping in boys' pictures of young women and in girls' pictures of old men than in other drawings. Pictures of old people overall were no more stereotyped than were those of young people, though they were more negative in content. Results of the DAP standard score calculation comparisons found consistent differences between children's drawings of old and young people, with pictures of old people attaining lower standard scores than those of young people. Size measurements revealed pictures of old people to be significantly smaller than those of young people. Explanations for these differences are discussed and further investigations recommended involving a wider population of artists and focusing particularly on the size of drawings.