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Lecture notes for assessment and intervention for children and families. Winter 2024 prof Loeb.
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Unit 01: Introduction toAssessment & Test Development
★ Objectives
By the end of this unit you should be able to:
● Define “assessment”
● Identify three types of assessments
● Differentiate between formal & informal assessments
● Describe reasons for assessment and early intervention
● Explain test development, test scores, and test interpretation
What is Assessment? Why is it Important?
Assessment is an important part of working with children. It is the process of
gathering information for the purposes of making decisions. The reason for
doing an assessment must be clear to all involved because it will determine
the questions that are asked and the instruments and procedures that are
chosen.
You will see throughout the course as we examine different measures, that
there are different types of assessment, which tend to fall into one of the three
categories:
1. Surveillance tools
2. Screening tools
3. Developmental/Diagnostic tests
Furthermore, assessments can be formal or informal. Formal assessments
are developed systematically and meet specific criteria. For example, a
standardized test of academic achievement is a formal assessment. In
,contrast, informal assessments take into account the skills of the assessor
and are based largely on observation. An example of an informal assessment
is a teacher’s observations of a student in his or her class. Another example of
an informal assessment is a teacher who reviews a particular student’s
academic record or portfolio.
Guidelines for Assessing Children
There are general guidelines for assessing young children and infants in the
United States. As you might expect, there are unique guidelines and
legislation for assessment that are quite different in Canada. For instance, the
Ontario Association for Infant and Child Development (OAICD) outlines
standards for best practices in caring for infants and children in our province.
To further complicate things, there may be variations in these legislations and
guidelines by province and by profession. You may want to explore specific
guidelines for professionals who belong to particular professional colleges
(e.g., Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists, Speech & Language
Pathologists, Psychologists).
In addition to following a set of guidelines for assessment, there are also
specific education and training requirements that must be met in order to
administer and/or interpret different types of assessments. In other words,
there are different levels of assessment, each one varying according to
educational training, qualifications, affiliations with a professional college, etc.
Specifically for formal assessments, professional organizations follow a
qualification system as an attempt to ensure that assessments are completed
accurately and ethically. Individuals who administer tests should only
administer the tests for which they have the appropriate level of training and
education.
The following levels of qualifications may be used to determine whether an
individual is considered competent to administer and interpret certain types of
tests:
● Level A: Individual has completed at least one course in measurement,
guidance, or an appropriate related discipline or has equivalent
supervised experience in test administration and interpretation.
, ● Level B: User has completed graduate training in measurement,
guidance, individual psychological assessment, or special appraisal
methods appropriate for a particular test.
● Level C: User has completed a recognized graduate training program
in psychology with appropriate coursework and supervised practical
experience in the administration and interpretation of clinical
assessment instruments.
In general, there is a need for training and supervision to learn, conduct,
interpret and use assessments. The assessment tools described throughout
this course adhere to Level A qualifications for assessment.
Reasons for Assessment
Some of the major reasons for assessment include:
● Identification or referral of children who have special needs
● Confirming a diagnosis or determining eligibility for particular supports
● Appropriate program planning
● Monitoring individual child’s progress
● Program accountability (to document how a particular program is
supporting a child’s development)
Assessments are important to determine a child’s eligibility for early
intervention services. For example, children who experience delays or are at
risk for delays may be identified through assessment and may benefit from a
variety of early intervention services in early education programs and in the
community.
Of course, there are a variety of challenges in assessment including the
characteristics of the child, assessing children with certain disabilities that may
make the assessment particularly difficult. For example, children with hearing,
visual, and motor impairments may face unique assessment challenges.
Some tests have alternate tests or test directions to appropriate assess
children with these difficulties. Children whose native language is not English
may have difficulties understanding and responding to assessments that are
conducted in English. Similarly, parents whose first language is not English
, may also have difficulties understanding assessments that are in English.
Another major challenge in assessment is in choosing the appropriate
assessment tool given that there are a lot of assessment tool options available
to practitioners.
The language discrepancy is not the only issue with a reliance on
standardized tests. The idea that these tests have inherent prejudice is being
explored.
Understanding Tests
Test Standardization
Within an assessment framework, a test is a set of standardized tasks
presented to a child. The purpose is to determine how well a child performs on
these tasks. Standardization includes:
● Standard materials
● Standard administration procedures
● Standard scoring procedures
● Standard interpretation of scores
The purpose of standardization is to ensure that each child has essentially the
same experience so that his or her scores can be compared to the
standardization sample. If children do not experience the same materials,
procedures, and scoring procedures, then we are not able to make
comparisons across children. This is why standardization is an important
process in testing and assessment. Standardization, though altruistic in its
intention, presents many pitfalls. While it attempts to create equality, the idea
that there is a 'normed' group has been historically problematic because the
test group has not been representative of existing demographics. With this in
mind we will still need to understand how standardization works, and how to
think about it when we might need to use it as a method of testing.
Test Content
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