Tianjiao Ma
Why This Topic
I’ve read a book called “A Guide Book of the House-Tree-Person Test” in high school. It simplely introduces that test takers are asked to draw a house, a tree, and a person separately. Then, based on the way they draw and matched it with the samples in the book, individuals are able to roughly interperate and analyze test takers’ personalities. I found it very interesting, and therefore, I developed an informal and nonacademic study to examine the validity of this test by asking my high school classmates to fill out a survey. It contains two parts, including the house/tree/person test, and the MBTI personality inventory. All these questionnaires were collected and analyzed manually. Since …show more content…
It (Fahmy, 2012) was designed by an American clinical psychologist John N. Buck in 1948, and later updated in 1969 by Buck and American psychologist Emanuel F. Hammer. In the test, test takers are asked to draw houses, trees, and persons separately as well as possible. These drawings can help the administrator to better understand test takers’ self-perceptions and attitudes. In addition, it presents concerns or conflict within individuals. It also has flexible and subjective interpretation, as many other projective tests.
Description
Buck developed a quantitative scoring system which can offer a measure of explanations to the drawings. Also, basic personality features were provided and categorized into groups. The administrator would usually ask questions about the house, tree and person, after the drawing is done. The questions are normally like “Is it a happy house?”, “Is the tree alive?” and “How does that person feel?”. Generally, the house figure presents the test taker 's home …show more content…
Male patients at a Veterans Administration Medical Center were categorized into four groups: nonparanoid schizophrenics, paranoid schizophrenics, affectively disturbed individuals, and nonpsychiatric patients. House-Tree-Person drawings by the subjects were interperated by four variables, including form level, number of extraneous details, total number of details, and size. Results show that statistically significant differences existed in form level but not in drawing size and number of extraneous details. Also, the study suggested that molar, subjective means remain the best way of evaluating projective drawings. However, the scoring systems for evaluation of house and tree drawings need to be