NCDS – Age 7 – Human Figure Drawing

The 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 7 sweep using the Human Figure Drawing measure.

Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.

Year of data collection:	1965
Domain:	General ability (perceptual)
Measures:	General mental and perceptual ability. Purports to measure cognitive maturation.
CHC:	Gv (Visual Processing)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NCDS Age 7 Survey (1965) (opens in a new tab)
Administrative method:	Teacher at school; face to face; pen and paper
Procedure:	The child was asked to ‘make a picture of a man’, within the rectangular frame. They were asked to make the best picture they could and to draw a whole person, not just a face or head.
	Duration: (expected 60 – 90 minutes for all 3 tests at age 7)
Link to questionnaire:	No direct link to pdf. Information can be found in the file ‘ncds1_1965_questionnaires_and_codebook.pdf’ which accompanies data download from UK Data Service website.
Scoring:	Awarded a mark out of 100 according to the features that were included
Item-level variable(s):	Not currently available
Total score/derived variable(s):	N1840 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: NCDS1 Tests (1965) Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Age of participant (months):	Mean = 85.11, SD = 1.56, Range = 82 – 93
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 14,642
	Range = 0 – 53
	Mean = 23.84
	SD = 7.08
	(click image to enlarge)
Other sweep and/or cohort:	BCS70 – Age 5 – Human Figure Drawing (different scoring system)
Source:	Modified version of the ‘Draw-a-man’ test (Goodenough, 1926) and later developed by Harris (1963).
	Goodenough, F. L. (1926). The measurement of intelligence by drawings, New York: World Book Company.
	Harris, D. B. (1963). Children’s drawings as measures of intellectual maturity, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
	Scoring was based on: Koppitz, E M. (1968). Psychological Evaluation of Children’s Human Figure Drawings. New York: Grune and Stratton
Technical resources:	Shepherd, P. Measures of ability at ages 7 to 16. National Child Development Study User Guide, 2012.
Example articles:	Schoon, I., Bynner, J., Joshi, H., Parsons, S., Wiggins, R. D., & Sacker, A. (2002). The influence of context, timing, and duration of risk experiences for the passage from childhood to midadulthood. Child Development, 73(5), 1486-1504.
	Schoon, I., & Parsons, S. (2002). Competence in the face of adversity: the influence of early family environment and long‐term consequences. Children & Society, 16(4), 260-272.