This study purports to examine if KSD(Kinetic School Drawing) is a useful tool to diagnose high school girls' stress level, by analyzing the characteristic relationship between the girls' stress level and their response to KSD.
The subjects for the study are 471 high school girls, all freshmen or sophomore, selected
from a foreign language high school and a regular high school. For the measurement tools,
'KSD' and 'the stress level' are used.
For data analysis, SPSS 10.0 is used Frequency-test, t-test, and one way ANOVA The results so obtained are as follows.
First, the subjects' KSD responses with regard to characteristics of behavior, portrait, and entire atmosphere were investigated according to types of school.
In the area of action, cooperation, abuse, and cruelty are lower in the regular high school than those in the foreign language school. However, more girls in the regular high school than those in the foreign language school think of their appearance socially important.
In the characteristics of portraits, the regular high school girls omit face parts in their drawings more often than the other girls; whereas the foreign language high school girls show more complete drawing forms depicted with face and body expressions, and with frequent erasure exhibiting weak hand pressure and many overlapped lines in their portraits.
Overlapped lines are also displayed in the drawings of self, teachers, and friends, in order to make more complete art work of portraits.
Second, F-test is taken to check the difference in stress level in accordance with KSD response.
In the area of action, the portraits in which interaction appears show higher stress than portraits in which no or less interaction appears. And the higher level of abuse and cruelty
they present, the higher stress they mark.
Of portrait characteristics, the drawings with 'unfriendly' expressions and frequent erasure indicate higher level of stress.
About the looks of entire surroundings, the drawings with 'unfriendly' and 'separate' surroundings show higher stress than those with 'friendly and 'warm' surroundings.
Key Words : Kinetic School Drawing, Stress, Foreign language high school, Regular high school.