Children’s drawings as a self-report measurement Liat Hamama and Tammie Ronen Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel-Aviv University, Israel ABSTRACT The present exploratory paper addresses school-aged children’s assessments of treatment outcomes using drawing as a self-report measure with usefulness for assessment and therapy. The process of using drawing in therapy can provide information on how a particular child perceives and conceives his or her own world. Examples are presented of drawings by three children with oppositional defiant disorder aged 10–11 years who participated in group intervention aiming to reduce aggressive behaviour. All three were asked to draw themselves twice on the same day at the end of treatment: (1) a retrospective drawing of themselves as they had been at the beginning of intervention; and (2) a drawing of themselves as they were now, after intervention. Children then described what they had drawn, revealing the change they perceived. Drawing as a self-report measure added information regarding: the child’s ability for self- awareness; the link between thoughts, emotions and behaviours; and the process of change. Correspondence: Liat Hamama, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel E-mail: liat-ha@zahav.net.il Keywords: assessment, drawing, self-report Accepted for publication: August 2008 INTRODUCTION Clinical practice with children dictates that therapists’ decisions about whether, when and how to intervene should be informed by the best currently available evidence about the effects of such interventions. Towards this end, data from client opinion can be useful in understanding elements of the helping process (Macdonald 2001). How to assess children, what measurements are valid and reliable, who is the best assessor and what is the role of self-report are few of the questions that should be considered when intervening with children (Kazdin 2000; Fongay et al. 2002; Kazdin & Weisz 2003). The present exploratory paper addresses those questions by using children’s drawing as a clinical self-report to measure the change processes experi- enced while terminating 12 sessions of group therapy based on a cognitive-behavioural model for increasing self-control skills and reducing aggression (Ronen & Rosenbaum 2001). ISSUES IN ASSESSMENT AND INTERVENTION The kinds of assessments used and the role of those assessments in intervention generally vary in accor- dance with several issues, the most crucial of which are the interventionists’ underlying theoretical orien- tation, the identity of the source who supplies the information, and therapeutic considerations. Theoretical considerations Different theories rely on different components of assessment and evaluation. For example, in psycho- analytic therapy, assessment aims to gauge the child’s developmental level on a variety of dimensions such as basic cognitive processes, object relations, personality structure, conflicts and fears, capacity for empathy, and coping resources (Tuma & Russ 1993). In behav- ioural therapy, assessment is based on: direct observa- tion of the child’s behaviour and interaction within his or her environment; scales and questionnaires to attain information about specific skills, resources and behaviours; and/or self-recordings of specific, clearly The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dee B. Ankonina for her editorial assistance. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2008.00585.x 90 Child and Family Social Work 2009, 14, pp 90–102 © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd