Determining Stereotypical Images Of Psychologists: The Draw A Psychologist Checklist - Statistical Data Included

Method

Participants

Participants were enrolled as students in Basic Psychology classes taught by two doctoral level instructors at a private woman's college. Most of the students were freshmen or sophomores. Size of classes ranged from 8 to 25. There were 5 males and 96 females enrolled in Basic Psychology classes during the study. Therefore, a majority of the students who responded were females of traditional college age. At this private institution, about 750 women are from all socioeconomic levels and the majority are from states other than Missouri, particularly Illinois and Texas. The make up of the students were 71%Caucasians, 7.8% African-Americans, 1.9% Hispanic, 1.5% Native American and 17.8% other.

The pretest of "Draw A Psychologist" was given to the students in the study during the first week of classes each of four semesters and the posttest was given during the last week of classes each of four semesters. Semesters were 14-15 weeks in length. Each class met three 50 minutes a week or two 1.25 hours per week. Students completed a one page demographic survey and then they were instructed to "draw a psychologist at work."

Instrumentation

The "Draw a Psychologist" Test was developed using the DAST-C (Finson et al., 1995) as a model. Most stereotypical images of a psychologist its described in the literature were included in the checklist. The original checklist items were then reviewed by a panel of Ph. D. psychologists. Suggestions from the panelists were incorporated into the final form of the checklist. The "Draw A Psychologist" test was field tested using a random sample of 10 Basic Psychology student responses to verify that the checklist contained stereotypical responses. The field test resulted in the final checklist.

The "Draw a Psychologist" Test looked at perceived stereotypical images of the psychologists, the patient or client, and the configuration of the psychologists' working environment. The stereotypes of the psychologists included male, eyeglasses, coffee cup, notes, asks questions, listens to client, sitting/legs crossed, evidence of Freud, unruly hair, positive facial expression, bald/balding, lab coat, thinking/insight illustrated, pencils in pocket, and other (i.e. teacher, researcher, or test administrator.) Patient/Client stereotypes included female, younger than the psychologist, an individual rather than a group, and negative facial expression. The elements of configuration of the working environment included couch, desk/table/lab station/straight-back chairs, soft chairs, books/papers, box of tissues, diploma/title, sits near the head of the patient/client, sits across from the client/side of client, and sterile office (no drapes, doors, windows, straight-back chairs only or a minimum amount of furniture).

Procedures

Students were given a blank piece of paper for the pretest and asked to "draw a psychologist at work. Please give a caption which explains what is happening in your drawing." Following the basic psychology course, students were given the same directions its above when they were given another blank piece of paper for the posttest.