The Cross-Cultural Utility of the Formal Elements Art Therapy Scales and Person Picking an Apple from a Tree

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the establishment of empirical data to support the cross-cultural use of art therapy assessment by looking at one art therapy assessment in particular, Formal Elements Art Therapy Scale (FEATS) used with Person Picking an Apple from a Tree (PPAT). This research was designed to identify whether the FEATS instrument in coordination with the PPAT (Gantt & Tabone, 1998) would be a reliable art therapy assessment in a cross-cultural context by obtaining normative data through testing Asian and American participants and using Asian and American raters. The first hypothesis stated there would be cross-cultural reliability of the assessment instrument, the FEATS, between the Asian and American participant and rater groups. The second hypothesis was that the normative statistics obtained in this study would be consistent with the originators’ (Gantt & Tabone, 1998) predictions about non-patient drawings and with normative statistics obtained from previous research (Bucciarelli, 2011; Nan and Hinz, 2012). The last hypothesis was that there would be no difference in the scores of the two college student groups, Americans and Asians, on the majority of scales for the FEATS assessment. The research was conducted with a total of 114 participants from both Asian and American cultural groups with equal numbers from each demographic. Participants were selected from undergraduate classes and student communities at a mid-sized public university in the United States. Asian and American participants completed the PPAT task, and their drawings were scored by a group of Asian raters and a group of American raters to examine inter-rater reliability and to provide normative data for both cultural groups. Data was analyzed using statistical tests including Pearson’s correlation and t-test. Results of this study supported the cross-cultural reliability of the FEATS with PPAT drawings for both Asian and American cultural groups. Future implications and recommendations are offered to improve the rigor of art therapy assessment research and future normative studies.