Impact of rater knowledge on sexually abused and nonabused girls' scores on the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED).

Human figure drawings collected from a clinical sample of 20 sexually abused and 20 nonsexually abused girls were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 case descriptions: Actual, in which raters were told the girls' actual abuse status, or Pretend, in which raters were told that drawings were made by girls with the opposite abuse status. Using the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED) scoring system developed by Naglieri, McNeish, and Bardos (1991), three raters independently scored 44 randomly ordered protocols, 4 of which were commonly rated as checks for rater accuracy and observer drift. Results revealed no significant effect for girls' abuse status or the case description given to raters, thereby suggesting that the DAP:SPED is sufficiently objective to withstand the confounding influence of varying case descriptions.