History of the Kinetic Family Drawing

The Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) was developed by Burns and Kaufman in
1970. Children are asked to draw their family doing something rather than given
the general instruction to just draw their family; the difference of asking a child to
include the family acting or doing something was a huge development to this
assessment tool. This tool is supposed to help the therapist understand what
attitudes the child has toward his or her family and also see what the family
dynamics are like in general.

Reliability and Validity Factors

It is difficult to determine the reliability and validity of the KFD because of its
subjectivity; different therapists can interpret a drawing in different ways based on
the questions they ask and how they see the drawings specifically. According to
Herson (2004), the test-retest reliability of the KFD is "good" (pg 328). It is hard to
measure the validity because of the inconsistent use of various scoring systems, but
the KFD has been popularly used abused and maltreated children and children with
serious medical illnesses.

Where to Obtain and Cost

The Kinetic Drawing System for Family and School is available at this site:
<http://www.wpspublish.com/store/p/2834/kinetic-drawing-system-for-family-andschool>. The entire kit, which includes a manual and 25 scoring booklets, costs
$92.00. The contents can be bough individually for $54.00 and $43.50,
respectively.

Administration and Interpretation

This test can be administered by any therapist or counselor and takes
approximately 20 minutes. The child is given the following instructions: "Draw
everyone in your family, including you, doing something." After the client is finished
drawing, the therapist will then ask questions about the drawing to clarify the
meaning (i.e. what each member of the family is doing). The manual includes a list
of questions to help guide the conversation if the therapist decides to use it. The

therapist will also take the scoring booklet and check the drawing for the presence
or absence of specific characteristics, and "score" the drawing. There are
hypotheses in the manual with case examples to help the therapist interpret the
drawing, too.

Article

This article aimed to study the how sibling relationships can be seen in the
results of kinetic family drawings. In the study, 51 children were administered the
kinetic family drawing test individually. The results showed that the drawings were
reflective of sibling relationships-- siblings who are distant in real life were shown in
the drawing further apart from each other. In addition to proximity, the actual way
the sibling figure(s) were drawn were different (i.e. smaller/bigger than other family
members, features, gender presentation, etc.). The conclusion of this article went
on to say that the order of family members being drawn may indicate how
important that person is to the child; those drawn first are more significant than
those drawn last. When siblings are drawn far away from the family, there may be
some issues in their relationships.

Metin, O. & Ustun, E. (2009). Reflection of sibling relationships into the kinetic family
drawings during the preschool period. Department of Early Childhood Education
2.Retrieved from http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1877042810003915/1-s2.0S1877042810003915-main.pdf?_tid=e79086ee-655d-11e4-9d4100000aab0f26&acdnat=1415241652_a969469e2a2202b245e5d31c4508f4d7

Image

Sample Kinetic Family Drawing

References