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Assessing Young Children with Deaf-Blindness
Table 1. Instruments Recommended by More Than 5 Respondents and/or Short Listed for Further Study
Instrument
The Communication Matrix and Dimensions of
Communication address only communication, while
the SIPSS addresses object interaction skills that
reflect concept development.
Ratings of Instruments on the
Short List
In all, 181 ratings were collected across the 11
instruments on the short list from the 135 professionals
who completed Survey 1 or 2. Ratings are reported
for three single-item content descriptions (‘‘useful to
assess communication,’’ ‘‘useful to assess social
interaction,’’ and ‘‘useful to assess cognition/learning’’)
and four major characteristics (appropriateness,
accuracy, applicability, and usability), each of which
was derived from mean ratings of several statements.
Table 2 shows the statements that were combined to
generate a composite score for each of the four
characteristics. Table 3 provides mean ratings for
each of the three content statements and the four
characteristics. The instruments that scored lowest on
appropriateness, accuracy, and applicability were the
three most widely available instruments: the Carolina,
HELP, and Vineland, none of which target children
with sensory impairments. The two instruments that
received the highest overall ratings (.4.0 on all items)
were the INSITE and Home Talk, both developed for
children who are deaf-blind.
Recommended
Short
Listed
Battelle (Newborg, 2005) X
Brigance (Brigance, 2004) X
a Callier-Azusa Scale-G edition (Stillman, 1978) X X
Carolina Curriculum (Johnson-Martin, Attermeir, & Hacker, 2007) X X
a Communication Matrix (Rowland, 2004) X X
a Dimensions of Communication (Mar & Sall, 1999b) X
Hawaii Early Learning Profile (Parks & Furuno, 2004) X X
a Home Talk (Oregon Health & Science University, 2003) X
a Infused Skills Assessment (Hagood, 1997) X X
a INSITE Developmental Checklist (Morgan & Watkins, 1989) X X
LAP (Sanford, Zelman, Hardin, & Peisner-Feinberg, 2004) or ELAP (Glover,
Preminger, & Sanford, 2002) X
Oregon Project (Anderson, Boigon, David, & deWaard, 2007) X X
a School Inventory of Problem Solving Skills (Rowland & Schweigert, 2002) X
Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 2006) X X
a Developed specifically for children who are deaf-blind.
66 | AER Journal:Research and Practice in Visual Impairment and Blindness
Analysis of Assessment and
IEP Data
Twenty-three IEP/IFSPs were collected from
children on whom assessments were administered.
Fourteen IEP/IFSPs omitted any mention at all of
formal assessment instruments. Many of these were
renewal IEP/IFSPs (although several initial IEP/
IFSPs included no reference to assessment tools, or
included no assessment information at all). In IEP/
IFSPs without mention of assessment tools, present
levels of performance were typically derived from
classroom performance per teacher or therapist
observation. Goals seemed to be selected based on
the next developmental ‘‘step’’ from the child’s
present levels of performance. It is possible that
teachers/therapists did refer to assessment instruments
in selecting these goals; however, it is also
possible that many of these professionals no longer
require the assistance of assessment instruments to
know what developmental step should come next.
The remaining nine IEP/IFSPs did mention use of
assessment tools; however, their role varied, as did
the number used. The number of formal assessment
instruments mentioned per IEP/IFSP varied from 1 to
8 (averaging 3) and involved a total of 24 different
instruments. Nine of these instruments were completely
new ones that had not appeared on Survey 1