Abstract
The commitment to early intervention for handicapped infants and young children is reflected in the rapid growth of a variety of home- and center-based programs in recent years. Although the need for such programs has been established, documentation has been more difficult to achieve. Central to these problems has been the fact that the assessment instruments and procedures have been less than adequate to meet the unique demands of an immature population with limited functional skills that are often confounded by sensory and motor impairments. The special assessment problems associated with early intevention have been elaborated in a number of contributions to the literature (Bricker, 1978; Simeonsson, Huntington, & Parse, 1980). Although these assessments problems have had a negative effect in complicating the documentation of early intervention effects, they have had a positive effect in highlighting the need for alternative assessment instruments and procedures in broad (Bricker, 1978) as well as specific (Cicchetti & Sroufe, 1976) domains of development. Given this context, the purpose of this chapter is to (a) define the role of assessment with handicapped infants and young children, (b) discuss the particular problem of population variability in assessment, (c) review several models for specifying child characteristics; and (d) propose elements of an assessment approach for describing children in terms of their functional capabilities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (1968). American psychiatry association diagnostic and statistic manual of mental disorders (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Bagnato, S. J., Jr., Neisworth, J. T. (1980). The intervention efficiency index: An approach to preschool program accountability. Exceptional Children, 46, 264–269.
Bagnato, S. J., Neisworth, J. T., & Eaves, R.C. (1978). A profile of perceived capabilities for the preschool child. Child Care Quarterly, 7, 327–335.
Bailey, D. B., Clifford, R. M., & Harms, R. (1982). Comparison of preschool environments for handicapped and nonhandicapped children. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 2(1), 9–20.
Brassell, D. R. (1977). Intervention with handicapped infants: Correlates of progress. Mental Retardation, 15, 18–22.
Bricker, D. (1978). Early intervention: The criteria of success. Allied Health and Behavioral Sciences, 1, 567–582.
Bricker, P. & Sheehan, R. (1981). Effectiveness of an early intervention program as indexed by child change. Journal of the Division for Early Childhood, 4, 11–27.
Cicchetti, D., & Sroufe, A. (1976). The relationship between affective and cognitive development in Down syndrome infants. Child Development, 47, 920–920.
Dollar, S. J., & Brooks, C. (1980). Assessment of severely and profoundly handicapped individuals. Exceptional Education Quarterly, 1, 87–101.
Dunst, C. J., & Rheingrover, R.M. (1981). An analysis of the efficacy of infant intervention programs with organically handicapped children. Evaluation and Program Planning, 4, 287–323.
Ebel, R. L. (1978). The case for norm-referenced measurements. Educational Researcher, 7(11), 3–5.
Endicott, J., Spitzer, R. L., & Fleiss, J. L. (1976). The Global Assessment Scale: A procedure for measuring overall severity of psychiatric disturbance. Archives of General Psychiatry, 33, 766–771.
Goldkamp, O. (1984). Treatment effectiveness in cerebral palsy. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 65, 232–234.
Hobbs, N. (1978). Classification options. Exceptional Children, 44, 494–497.
Hobbs, N. (1975). The future of children. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Holt, K. S. (1957). A suggested medical classification of handicapped children. Archives of the Diseases of Childhood, 32, 226–229.
Holt, K. S. (1977). Developmental pediatrics: Perspectives and Practice. London: Butterworth.
Horn, S. O., Cashick, B., & Clayton, C. (1980). Measuring severity of illness; A reliability study. Medical Care, 21, 705–714.
Kenden, R. E. (1983). The principles of classification in relation to mental disease. In M. Shepard & O.L. Zangwill (Eds.), Handbook of psychiatry: Vol. 1. General psychopathology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lindon, R. L. (1963). The Pultibec system for the medical assessment of handicapped children. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 5, 125–145.
Meads, S. (1983). The World Health Organization’s reason-for-encounter classification. WHO Chronicle, 37, 159–162.
Popham, W. J. (1978). The case for criterion-referenced measurements. Educational Researcher, 7(11), 6–10.
Preus, M., & Rex, A. P. (1983). Definition and diagnosis of the Brachmann-DeZange syndrome. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 16, 301–312.
Rutter, M., Shaffer, D., & Shepherd, M. (1975). A multi-axial classification of child psychiatric disorders. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Shaffer, D., Gould, M.S., Brasic, J., Ambrosini, P., Fisha, P., Bird, H., & Aluwahlia, S. (1983). A Children’s Global Assessment Scale. Archives of General Psychiatry, 40, 1228–1231.
Sheehan, R., & Keogh, B. (1982). Design and analysis in the evaluation of early childhood special education program. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 1, 81–88.
Simeonsson, R. J., (1982). Intervention, accountability and efficiency indices: A rejoinder. Exceptional Children, 48, 358–359.
Simeonsson, R. J. (1986). Psychological and developmental assessment of special children. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Simeonsson, R. J., Huntington, S. S., & Parse, S. A. (1980). Assessment of children with severe handicaps: Multiple problems, multivariate goals. Journal of the Association for the Severely Handicapped, 5, 55–72.
Simeonsson, R. J., & Wiegerink, R. (1975). Accountability: A dilemma in infant intervention. Exceptional Children, 41, 474–481.
Simeonsson, R. J., Cooper, D. H., & Scheiner, A. P. (1982). A review and analysis of the effectiveness of early intervention program. Pediatrics, 69, 635–641.
Sontag, E., Smith, J., & Sailor, W. (1977). The severely/profoundly handicapped: Who are they? Where are they? Journal of Special Education, 11, 5–11.
Stein, R. E., & Jessop, R. E. K., (1983). A noncategorical appoach to chronic childhood illness. Public Health Reports, 97, 354–362.
Wolery, M. (1983). Proportional change index: An alternative for comparing child change data. Exceptional Children, 1983, 50, 167–170.
World Health Organization. (1980). International Classification of Impairment Disabilities and Handicaps. Geneva: Author.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Simeonsson, R.J., Bailey, D.B. (1988). Essential Elements of the Assessment Process. In: Wachs, T.D., Sheehan, R. (eds) Assessment of Young Developmentally Disabled Children. Perspectives in Developmental Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9306-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9306-2_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-9308-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-9306-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive