Rapid Screener® is an online multi-rater interview that collects and analyzes information about student and adult functioning. By using raters who know the individual in different contexts, a more complete and valid 360˚ view can be developed. Rapid Screener® can be used on a one-time basis to save clinicians and teachers hours of time and help teams quickly identify areas of priority. It can also be used as a serial data collection tool, measuring individual progress over time.
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The Rapid Screener Process Validity Analysis Completion and Interpretation Information for School Psychologists and Clinicians
Summary List of Features Tutorials and Demos Frequently Asked Questions Version History Rapid Screener Article
Rapid Screener is a single or multi-rater behavior assessment tool. It allows parents, teachers, other school staff, and involved outside professionals to quickly determine situations where students are functioning most successfully and where problems exist. By helping families and schools better understand which behaviors are causing difficulties across settings, more productive intervention strategies can be developed and monitored.
Many behavior surveys are designed for completion by a single parent and a single teacher, and sometimes by the student. Yet, there are usually many more individuals involved in the typical educational program for a child with special needs. There may be a speech-pathologist, school counselor, occupational therapist, school psychologist, resource teacher, and others who all have student contact with potentially useful information to report.
Adding to this are children who reside in blended families; it quickly becomes apparent that the "teacher/parent" model is inadequate to capture the complexity of patterns that may surround various behaviors that occur at school or outside of school.
Common Rapid Screener uses Top
determining whether problems are occurring in the educational program or other settings (e.g., home and/or community) assessing response to Interventions as required by IDEIA 2004 as an aid in completing Functional Assessments; for identifying complex behavior patterns to determine the most important areas to target for behavioral intervention; efficiently identifying important behaviors during clinical treatment.
A behavior assessment identified behaviors occurring at home and school, some that only occur at home, and some that occur only at school. During the subsequent IEP meeting, a significant amount of time is spent sorting out what should be worked on, team consensus became difficult, and disagreements arose over whether certain home-based behaviors should also be addressed in the school environment.
The result? Hours were spent with little or no useful intervention resulting, and an adversarial relationship began to form. Ultimately, despite all of the time and energy put into the process, few walked away from the meeting feeling satisfied.
A better solution... Top
Our method of collecting and analyzing data directly addresses this problem. A series of correlational analyses is performed between all raters, identifying trends in the overall response patterns. A list of positive and interfering behaviors is produced which includes only those behaviors occurring both at school and home (or community settings).
This reporting process both empowers and protects families. At times, there are specific behaviors occurring at home that families prefer be kept private. Yet, the typical assessment process includes revealing or discussing these behaviors at the IEP meeting, even though the school will not be addressing these concerns. Only the severity of broader categories of behavior are identified in the multi-rater report, not specific individual behaviors. If a family wishes to receive or share these concerns with the school this information can be included in the report at no additional charge based on the request of the school psychologist or clinician ordering the assessment.
Rapid Screener focuses on the specific types of behavior that typically lead to a request for a Functional Assessment. Using the Multi-Rater Summary as a guide, team discussion can then focus on identifying significant antecedent conditions preceding interfering behavior and the team can work to develop an initial Positive Behavior Support or Intervention Plan.
Using Rapid Screener, the scope and limits of each rater's observation is clearly identified in the Multi-Rater Summary. The teacher may or may not be observing behavior at recess and/or lunch; families observe behavior at home, not school.
Even if a more detailed Functional Analysis Assessment is recommended, there is pre-existing team consensus regarding which behaviors are being explored, facilitating the process of conducting a subsequent assessment leading to more successful outcomes. As a result of this analytical method, team meetings become more purposeful, disagreements are minimized, and the team process is more usefully focused on the needs of the student.
Rapid Screener Process Top
What happens when a user logs onto Rapid Screener? They complete three related sections: Demographics, Positive Behaviors, Interfering Behaviors.
These are detailed below:
