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

1. All studies reported enough information about tests between patients and
controls, or patient groups to be evaluated methodologically for orientation,
concepts and results.
2. A small number of studies which investigated the correspondence of art tests
against criterion measures and were not included in group 1 were added for the
discussion of validity.
3. A small group of studies which investigated inter-rater reliability were added to
those studies from group 1 which used more than one rater for:
(a) an evaluation of psychopathological signs in patient artwork;
(b) a meta analysis to determine the effect size for art measures (Chapter 3).
Amongst the 51 controlled studies were 4 comparisons between therapy groups. They
measured behavioural details using non-art measures and one rater, although two used
another criterion measure. They are included in the analysis where appropriate, but their
aims, directions and information presented were different and they were omitted from
some of the tables for clarity. Group sizes therefore do not always add up to 51.
Methodology for analysis of controlled studies
Characteristics of each paper were tabulated according to the variables described below.
Descriptive statistics were used for a preliminary comparison of data from all 51 studies
to find out what results were claimed for art therapy. There were 3 categories of
information common to most papers: information about the test subjects, the study
purpose and procedure, the results and conclusions from the test.
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