Few would deny the importance of art education in the total educational development of the child. Drawing is an integral component of art education. Drawing for children appears to be a natural form of expression. Studies involving the observation of children's drawing development have had a long history in relation to child art. Recognition that children pass through identifiable stages of development in drawing and that these stages could be affected by cultural and individual differences is an important focus in art education research. This study is concerned firstly with drawing development and secondly, with differences in drawing development across cultures. Eight year old children with predominantly European background and eight year old children with Vietnamese/Kampuchean background were chosen for this study. The study was concerned with determining whether there were any significant differences in drawing development between the two ethnic groups, using a modified scale of the Rouse "Descriptive Scale for Measurement of Art Products". The results of this study indicate that there are differences in drawing abilities between the two ethnic groups.

The purpose of the present study was to develop the Descriptive Death Scale (DDS), a brief, descriptive and multidimensional measure that assesses individual perceptions of single death experiences. The DDS has the potential to expand how death experiences are understood in the literature because it can serve as a tool for grievers to quantitatively contextualize their single death experiences instead of indicating only the mode of death. From a constructivist perspective, the adjectives included in the DDS are parcels of meaning that symbolically contextualize grievers’ subjective understanding. Drawing from qualitative research, I compiled a broad list of 65 adjectives that grievers and terminally ill patients have used to describe past and impending deaths. My online recruitment process resulted in a sample of respondents (<i>N</i> = 572) who identified primarily as White/European American, cisgender female and heterosexual (83%, 85%, and 83%, respectively). Their ages ranged from 18 to 80 (<i>M = </i>43.13, <i>SD =</i> 13.40). The results of the EFA indicated a 5-factor structure; however, the CFA analysis/ESEM indicated that a 4-factor model better fit the data. The DDS subscales (i.e., Incomprehensible, Warm, Withering, Ostracized) include a total of 27-items and scores on each subscale displayed good internal consistency and convergent and discriminant validity. The results from the regression analysis indicated that the Incomprehensible, Warm and Withering death subscales contributed significantly and positively to grief distress, beyond closeness to the deceased and age of the deceased. The DDS assesses the nuanced and unique profiles of grievers’ perceptions of single deaths. It can serve as an important and novel tool for researchers and clinicians to capture grievers multidimensional and subjective understanding of their death experiences. With single word items, it is brief, easy to use, and versatile across domains.