Abstract

In this paper we review the psychometric characteristics of some of the most used projective techniques for children and adolescents, the Draw a Human Figure, the Draw a Family, the Children Apperception Test, the Duss tales and the Draw a Tree. Our aim is to offer the users of these techniques for clinical or forensic purposes, the state of art of their reliability, validity and standardization scores. Even considering what emerge from the international literature, if for some techniques like, the Draw a Human Figure, the Draw a Family and the Duss tales, is possible to obtain adequate interjudges reliability coefficients, there are still insufficient data related to test-retest reliability and validity in general and discriminant and predictive validity in particular. Furthermore, all techniques lack of adequate Italian standardisation norms to permit a normative use. The quality of the psychometric characteristics of the data of these projective techniques available at the moment, suggests not to adopt them for a nomotetic use, letting the possibility open for an idiographic use.