The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

which were not significant - and I would totally disagree with the assumption that
negative coefficients implied another characteristic was a strong indicator of
predictability, especially when the variable itself was tested, but not included: eg. "a
striking feature of dysthymia was light pressure" (indicated by a negative coefficient on
medium and heavy pressure). The t-values for heavy pressure were greater than one in
both picture A and B, which merited some discussion, but surely this indicated heavy
pressure was not applied, not that light pressure was applied! One of the study variables
was light pressure - why was it not included in the results? Similarly monochrome as a
significant characteristic is inferred from the negative correlations on multicoloured
pictures from schizophrenic patients. Monochrome was one of the study variables, why
was it not included in the schizophrenia results if it was a significant characteristic? 183
It is obvious the technique of multiple regression is not appropriate for this
analysis, as reflected in the low levels of the multiple r-squared statistic 184 and does not
do justice to the clinical merit of the DDS.
When the DAPA was being developed, the DDS was already rather famous.
Over 10 years, it has developed a 4 page resources list 185 . I contacted the DDS team and
183 The DDS team have declined to answer any of these serious criticisms. They have also ignored my
requests for clarification of their methods, since they are no longer in contact with their statistician. But
the DDS team are still encouraging art therapists to use this measure and bring in new work (DDS
Newsletter Dec. 1998).
184 Multiple r 2 measures the fit of the model to the information provided - the closer to 1 the better. A
good fit would typically be 0.7-0.99. The DDS results were: Dysthymia 0.15; Depression 0.10:
Schizophrenia 0.22; Control 0.44. The control shows the best fit and the t-statistics are significant on
more variables, but very weak. However, if the numbers in the group are very different - as is hinted in
the paper, this might have a confounding effect.
185
DDS Resource List (1988) unpublished. 64 items mostly unpublished in cassette form. All published
material is discussed in this thesis.
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