Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test (1926) - Non-Verbal IQ by Drawing

Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test: Non-verbal IQ via a drawing

The simplest possible non-verbal intelligence test: have the child draw a picture of a man, then score the drawing on a 51-point checklist (was a head included? eyes? proportional limbs?). Florence Goodenough published the standardization in 1926. The test is still occasionally used today, in its 1963 Harris revision, as a non-verbal screening tool.

About the Goodenough Draw-A-Man Test

Florence Goodenough's Draw-A-Man Test asks the child a single question: 'Draw a picture of a man. Make the very best picture that you can.' The child draws on a blank sheet of paper. The drawing is then scored against a 51-point checklist of features (head present, neck present, two eyes, two ears, arms attached to body at proportional position, hands shown distinct from arms, fingers, clothing, etc.). The total score is converted to a mental age and IQ using Goodenough's 1926 norms.

The test was revolutionary because it was completely non-verbal, took 10 minutes, required no specialized materials, and gave a meaningful IQ estimate. It was widely used for screening in schools and clinics through the 1940s and 1950s. The Harris revision (1963) added a Draw-A-Woman component and revised the scoring; that version remained in active clinical use into the 1980s.

The Goodenough approach has limitations - drawing skill is correlated with but not identical to general intelligence - but for non-verbal screening in young children (especially those with limited language or atypical development), it remains a useful 10-minute screening tool.

About this interactive version: The Draw-A-Man Test requires the child to actually draw on paper, and then requires an examiner to score the drawing against the 51-point checklist. We cannot administer this in a browser. The original 51-point scoring rubric is reproduced below; if you have a child's drawing of a man, you can score it yourself using these criteria.

The 1 subtests

Score the drawing on the 51-point checklist Each of the 51 items below is scored present (1 point) or absent (0 points). Total score converts to mental age via Goodenough's table.

Examiner Required

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

Goodenough, F. L. (1926). Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: World Book Company.

Public domain in the US. Goodenough was a Stanford-trained psychologist (PhD under Terman, 1924) who became one of the most prominent figures in early American child psychology. The Draw-A-Man Test was her dissertation work. Read it on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/measurementofint0000flor.

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