School Setting Interview
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School Setting Interview

Last Updated

Purpose

The SSI measures the fit between the school environment and the student with a disability. It is used to identify school activities that are not a good fit. The therapist collaborates with the student to determine adjustments to the environment in order to promote participation in school activities.

Link to Instrument

Acronym SSI

Area of Assessment

Life Participation
Social Relationships
Quality of Life
Attention & Working Memory
Assertiveness
Patient Satisfaction

Assessment Type

Patient Reported Outcomes

Administration Mode

Paper & Pencil

Cost

Not Free

Actual Cost

$40.00

Populations

Pediatric Disorders

Key Descriptions

  • The SSI is a non-standardized, ecological type of assessment with the following characteristics:
    A) 16 questionnaire items pertaining to school activities that students with disabilities may need adjustments so they can participate in school activities
    B) Four-step rating scale is used to determine the student-environment fit
    C) Minimum score (student-environment fit is unfit) - 16
    D) Maximum score (perfect student-environment fit) - 64
  • The SSI consists of the following forms:

    A) General Background Form - Demographic information, open-ended questions about student’s experience at school to determine sense of efficacy and student’s interests

    B) Need for Adjustment Form- Student identifies need for adjustment for 16 items while collaborating with occupational therapist. Ratings include:
    1 - student needs new adjustments
    2 - has had some adjustments made but needs some additional changes
    3 - already has had satisfactorily adjustments
    4 - has no need for adjustments

    C) Intervention Planning Form- If the student identifies needs for adjustment in certain school activities, the therapist collaborates with the student about possible adjustments necessary. The student will identify when, by whom and how it will be done.

    D) Summary Sheet- Once the interview is complete, the therapist transfers a quick overview of the ratings on the Need for Adjustment Form to the Summary Sheet.

Number of Items

16

Equipment Required

  • Paper & Pencil

Time to Administer

40 minutes

Required Training

Reading an Article/Manual

Age Ranges

Child

6 - 12

years

Adolescent

13 - 17

years

Adult

18 - 64

years

Instrument Reviewers

Initial review completed by University of Illinois at Chicago MS in Occupational Therapy students Raveena Kingra, Rikki Ostrowski, & Amalia Zeidman.

ICF Domain

Activity
Participation

Measurement Domain

Cognition

Considerations

Hemmingsson, Kottorp, and Bernspang (2004) suggest adding more difficult items to the SSI in order to improve the psychometric properties. Adding more challenging items would increase the ability of the assessment to separate people and be more precise in measuring the student-environment fit. The authors also specify the need for testing the validity of the SSI among different cultures with larger samples.

The manual states practitioners can use the SSI with students who have physical disabilities and students who have cognitive disabilities even though the research has focused on student populations with physical disabilities (Hemmingsson et al., 2005). This assessment could introduce bias if students’ perceptions do not accurately reflect environmental adaptations they might need. Moreover, some of the items may not apply to different cultures (e.g. going on field trips, doing sports activities), and published research has only focused on students from Sweden. 

Pediatric Disorders

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Cut-Off Scores

The SSI manual does not currently include any cut-off scores or recommendations that pertain to the sum score.

Interrater/Intrarater Reliability

Swedish Students with severe Physical Disabilities: (Hemmingsson & Borell, 1996; n = 45, Age Range = [16, 19])

  • Adequate, for version 1.1, a kappa between .76 and 1.0 was found, indicating good agreement between pairs of raters

Construct Validity

Construct Validity - Item Fit:

Swedish Students with Physical Disabilities: (Hemmingsson, Kottorp, & Bernspang, 2004; n = 87; Age Range = [8, 19])

  • Adequate item goodness-of-fit demonstrated by acceptable infit MnSq values (< 1.4) and z-values (< 2.0)

Content Validity

Swedish Students with Severe Physical Disabilities: (Hemmingsson & Borell, 1996)

  • Adequate based on thirteen occupational therapists' evaluation of content validity, with unanimous agreement in the adequacy of content areas for the intended purpose.

Bibliography

Hemmingsson, H. & Borell, L. (1996). The development of an assessment of adjustment needs in the school setting for use with physically disabled students. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 3, 156-162.

Hemmingsson, H., Egilson, S., Oshrat, H., & Kielhofner, G. (2005). The School Setting Interview: SSI version 3.0. Swedish Association of Occupational Therapists.

Hemmingsson, H., Kottorp, A., & Bernspang, B. (2004). Validity of the School Setting Interview: An assessment of the student-environment fit. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 11, 171-178.

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