What's scored is detail and proportion — not artistic skill.
Make the very best picture you can
From one drawing to three
The scoring checklist grew as the test was revised. Select a version.
Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings
World Book, 1926, in the Measurement and Adjustment Series edited by Lewis Terman [2]. It began as Goodenough's doctoral work [4]. Children's mental ages from the drawing correlated strongly with Stanford-Binet mental ages and with school performance at each age studied [1].
Her best-known line about it: a child "draws what he knows, rather than what he sees" [4].
References
- [1]Long, B. et al. (2024). Better than Goodenough? Evaluating new computational techniques for finding diagnostic structure in children's drawings. Memory & Cognition. Springer.link.springer.com
- [2]Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings (World Book, 1926; Measurement and Adjustment Series, ed. L. M. Terman). Google Books record with contents.books.google.com
- [3]Measurement of intelligence by drawings / by Florence L. Goodenough (1926), xi + 177 pp. Wellcome Collection.wellcomecollection.org
- [4]Florence Goodenough. Open History of Psychology (Pressbooks).pressbooks.pub
- [5]Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability test with the Goodenough-Harris Drawing Test. ScienceDirect.sciencedirect.com
- [6]Draw-a-Person test. Wikipedia.en.wikipedia.org
Related historical tests
Harris extended the checklist to 73 points for a man and added a woman, scored on 71. Children also drew themselves.
Goodenough checked her drawing scores against 1916 Stanford-Binet mental ages at each age. The book came out in Terman's own series.
Pintner's non-language tests included drawing completion. Goodenough made one whole drawing the test.
Both were built for children too young to read. Detroit used marked pictures; Goodenough used the child's own drawing.
Kohs, like Goodenough, studied with Terman. His blocks were another way to measure intelligence without words.
Binet's scale already asked children to copy a square and a diamond. Goodenough asked for a figure drawn from memory instead.