Intellectual evaluations of adolescents via human figure drawings: an empirical comparison of two methods

The human figure drawings of 200 adolescent boys were collected at a residential treatment center in a midsized, midwestern city. The drawings were scored for cognitive ability according to the systems of Buck (1966) and Goodenough and Harris (1963). Both scoring systems showed acceptable interrater reliability and both were positively and significantly related to IQ scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Buck's system, however, had less of a tendency to underestimate IQ scores. Buck's system may therefore hold greater promise for the intellectual assessment of adolescents with human figure drawings.