Rationale: Designing programs to support peer social interaction of young children with special educational needs (SEN) and other social challenges requires systematic assessment of social performance.  Observational assessment in authentic preschool settings is a primary way of collecting this information, but to date few psychometrically validated measures exist.  The Teacher Impression Scale (TIS) is one measure designed for this purpose, however, to date its use internationally has been limited.  The purpose of this poster presentation will be to describe the adaptation of the TIS for use in Swedish preschool programs and examine the psychometric qualities.

Objectives: To adapt the TIS-scale for use in Swedish preschool programs, and to examine the psychometric qualities of the adapted instrument.

Description: The TIS (Odom et al., 1997) is an observer impression scale consisting of 16-items, rated on a five-point Likert format (1 = never performs skill, to 5 = frequently performs skill). The scale requires teachers or other service providers to observe a single child during play with peers for a five-minute period, three to four times per week, for two weeks. At the end of each single observational sample, the observer completes the rating scale, and then computes a mean rating after all the observations were completed.  In the current study, the researchers translated and modified items to fit the Swedish context (Teacher Impression Scale-Swedish, or TIS-S).  They then had teachers complete the TIS-S for 16 children with SENs and 16 without SENs enrolled, aged 3 to 5, in 12 preschools.  To assess reliability, the authors conducted Cronbach alphas; yield a coefficient of .97 for the entire scale. To assess construct validity, they conducted a principal components analysis that explained 76.4% of the variance and had factor loadings across items ranging from .75 to .91. In addition, as an assessment of criterion-related validity, the authors used a matched t-test to examine the difference in mean TIS scores for the children with special education needs (mean =43.3, sd = 11.46) and their peers (mean = 70.3, sd = 9.0), yielding a significant difference between groups (p < .001). Teachers also completed a social validity rating questionnaire, with the majority of teachers rating “to a high extent” that the scale “was in agreement with their understand of peer interaction”, “was useful for observing children”, and “helped identify children’s strengths and needs for support.”

Questions for the CRIEI Audience: 1. Do the items of the TIS-S fit with your conceptualization of prosocial peer interaction of young children?  2. Does these results convince you that the TIS-S is a psychometrically strong instrument? 3.  Would an instrument like the TIS be of use for teachers in inclusive preschool classes?