A comparison of drawing characters of orphanage children and non-orphanage in Draw-a-Family Test

Thepurpose of the present project is to compare drawing characters of orphanage children and non-orphanage in draw a family test.Thisis a causal-comparative study which was done in April-May 2009. The sample consisted of 13 girls and 4 boys aged 7-10 in each of orphanage and non-orphanage groups. Orphanage group were selected from boarding house by available sampling and non-orphanage group were selected from Rasht elementary schools randomly. In this project Draw-a-Family Test has been performed by Corman procedure. Thus, the participants were asked to imagine a desirable family and draw it on the paper. Then, each child was asked about the role, age and the feeling of illustrated people toward each other and the character he liked to be instead. Data was analyzed by chi-square test. Results indicated that in content indexes of Drawing-a-Family Test, such as the first drawn person, the biggest drawn person, the child identification issue, the last drawn person, the complete remove person and in drawing indexes of the test such as the extend of draw, the force of drawn lines, draw orientation, the child distance to parent, no significant difference was found between two groups, but there was a significant difference about add new person index between two groups (P=0.039). Orphanage group showed conflicts about the parent, while non-orphanage group had conflicts about the children of the family. According to Draw-a-Family Test, orphanage and non-orphanage children have different conflicts.