The use of a favourite kind of weather drawing as a discriminatory tool for children who have experienced physical abuse

• The assessment criteria for the FKW drawing comprised six items for the formal elements and four for the content elements.
• The assessment criteria for the FKW drawing had a three-point scale for all ten items.
• The assessment criteria for the FKW drawing were validated and proved to be reliable.
• The FKW drawing test can be used as a diagnostic tool to discriminate between physically abused and non-abused children.

In this study, objective assessment criteria were developed to test the validity and reliability of using the Favorite Kind of Weather (FKW) drawing as a projective technique to discriminate between physically abused and non-abused children. Stratified sampling was used to select 577 third- to ninth-grade school children, of whom 295 were residing in shelters and 282 living with normal families. The study instruments were FKW drawing, the Child Abuse Experience Scale. The assessment criteria for the FKW drawings that were developed in three stages by four researchers: two graduate school students, one in master's and one in doctor's course, my supervisor, and me. The criteria comprised six formal and four content elements. A three-point scale was used for these ten items. In the study results, the inter-rater consistency in the FKW drawing among the three raters ranged from 94.0% to 95.8%, with an intra-rater consistency of 97.0%. The reliability was estimated to be Cronbach's α = .721 for the formal elements and Cronbach's α = .632 for the content elements. Based on these results, the FKW drawing was validated on the basis of construct validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity, which confirmed its validity for use as a child abuse discriminator.