Psychometric properties scale of drawing a story among 6 to 11 years old children

Aim and Considering the verbal limitation in children, their low cooperation with therapist and lack of awareness of their emotions and actions have made their psychological assessment limited to the rating child behavior by parents or teachers or the use of behavioral observations. There is an urgent need to identify and apply diagnostic tools that can assess the child’s emotions from their perspective. Drawing a story is able to respond to these needs. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate reliability, validity and standardization of drawing a story (DAS) among the children in elementary school of Shiraz, Iran. Methods and Materials: 500 primary school students from Shiraz were selected through multistage stratified random sampling. Subjects performed DAS and child behavior checklist (CBCL) was filled out by their parents. Data was analyzed using Spearman correlation coefficient, Kappa’s agreement coefficient, Cronbach's alpha and one way ANOVA. Cronbach's alpha was 0.82 for emotional scale, and reliability was 0.69, 0.64 and 0.58 for emotional content, self-image and using humor, respectively. Convergent validity was calculated by determining the correlation coefficient with child behavior checklist (CBCL). It was used in the comparison of the validity of the differential scores of children in three groups (depressed, aggressive and normal). Results of this study showed that drawing a story has psychometric properties for utilizing in psychological research and clinical diagnosis.