Kinetic Family Drawing

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-and-school>.  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-s2.0-S1877042810003915-main.pdf?_tid=e79086ee-655d-11e4-9d41-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1415241652_a969469e2a2202b245e5d31c4508f4d7

Image 

Sample Kinetic Family Drawing

References 

Hersen, M. (Ed.). Comprehensive handbook of psychological assessment (Vol 2). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

LaJudice, C.M. (2012). Examining family functioning in pediatric bipolar disorder through kinetic family drawings.  (Dissertation). Retrieved from http://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2386&context=theses

WPS: Unlocking Potential. (2014). Kinetic drawing system for family and school.  Retrieved at http://www.wpspublish.com/store/p/2834/kinetic-drawing-system-for-family-and-school