The measurement of quality in children's painting by the scale method.

Abstract

Introduction. While tests of artistic appreciation have been devised satisfying the scientific requirement involving control of all variables under consideration, less objectivity has seemed possible in the measurement of artistic ability or the ability to produce. An approach to problems involving the artistic ability of children, however, made it incumbent upon certain of the investigators (8,9,11), whose studies are reported in this monograph, to develop, in so far as possible, a reasonably reliable means for determining status in artistic production. For this purpose the scale of values method was chosen as offering the most objective and most practical treatment available. While this method can not eliminate the necessity for a certain degree of subjectivity in judgment, it furnishes the judges with a more or less definite set of values on which to make decisions of merit. The superiority of this method over the direct judging technique has been demonstrated by Brooks (2). Using as instruments the drawing scales of Kline-Carey (5) and Thorndike (10), Brooks found the inaccuracy of rating to be reduced by one-half of what it was when ratings were made without the use of a scale. A scale of values offers a further advantage in that, once established, it may be used for other groups of similar material at different times and by different persons, while

Studies in the psychology of children's drawings: II 1928-1949.

“…Scoring is in terms of points assigned for the representation of each of a number of specified parts. More conventional is the type of scaling used by Kerr (140) in her study of children's drawings of houses and by Tiebout (295) for the measurement of children's paintings, both of whom developed their scale values on the basis of differences equally often noticed by presumably competent judges. The Horn-Hellersberg Test (123) consists of twelve squares into which lines derived from test pictures by Carl Horn 6 are to be incorporated in such a way as to form a picture.…”

Artistic ability and general intelligence.

“…All of the Grade VII subjects were students in the Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, which serves the same area as the Phillips School. Complete information on the selection of these subjects is given in the preceding article (39) which is introductory to this and the studies of Saunders (33) and Meier and Stinson (28) in which these same subjects were used.…”

“…Since the only available scale for such measurement, the Kline-Carey Measuring Scale for Freehand Drawing, Part II (21), did not include sufficient samples to give the desired differentiation in products, particularly at the lower grade levels, a new measuring series was devised consisting of separate scales for each of the seven grades. The development and use of these scales in determining the artistic status, or painting score, of the subjects used is described in the preceding article (39). In brief, the final painting score of each subject represents the average value of his three paintings as judged by the scale devised for his grade.…”

“…Results obtained through the use of these measures of intelligence and artistic ability described in the preceding section, together with other necessary data, were compiled in tabular form for all groups of subjects used in this study. Table I presents summarized data for the entire group of subjects in Grades I-VII including, in addition to the material reproduced from Table I of the preceding article (39), a column giving the average of the painting scores as the measures of artistic ability have been designated. Since the results of the subjects in Grades II-VI inclusive of the Phillips School have also been treated apart from those for the entire group, data for this group alone are given in the following table.…”