Do you see what I see? A study about the interrater reliability in art therapy.

There are many clinical reports on art therapy, but there are few data from experimental research. The main goal of this study was to investigate the interrater agreement of 86 raters who evaluated a picture created during an art therapy session. This rating was based on formal (color, lines, shapes) and contextual criteria. The resulting interrater agreement was not satisfying (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.18-0.52). The authors also address the question of whether raters are able to determine which picture was created at the beginning of the art therapy and which was created at the end. On the basis of the examination of five sets of pictures, it became apparent that they were not able to do so.