Practice, practice, practice…a SIS interview

When it comes to a SIS assessment, the old adage, “Practice makes perfect” is indisputable. You can even take it a step further and say that without adequate practice, a SIS interview will fail to capture the true support needs of an individual.

AAIDD Senior Trainer, Natalie Ihli, explains that most new learners approach the Supports Intensity Scale similar to book learning or other assessments they have done. “They see SIS and think it looks simple and assume, it can be mastered if they read about it. On the contrary, SIS is a very tactile and interactive tool that must be practiced to master.” This concept may be a rarity in today’s case management world, but with SIS, it is real.

So why is it so important to practice SIS? For one, with sufficient practice, an interviewer’s familiarity with SIS can speed up the assessment process while also increasing confidence, explains Ihli. While items ranked by SIS appear simple enough, subtleties and deeper levels of understanding can only be arrived at through familiarity with the Scale. These include remembering details such as the fact that supports required to operate home appliances (A8) does not include washers/dryers covered by item A2 under “taking care of clothes”, as well as global issues such as correctly measuring transportation needs not per item, but in certain sections of the Scale. An interviewer who has no practice is very likely to assess the individual incorrectly if conducting the very first SIS interview with a real respondent.

Another case for practice is the time it takes to transition from an “evaluating the skills” mode to one where you envision the supports needed for the individual to successfully complete life activities important to all of us. Ihli points out, “It is easy to get distracted by a person’s abilities when trying to understand what supports s/he may need. You have to stay focused on supports and practice enables you to cement this fact in your mind.” People can also get preoccupied with the time it takes to administer SIS, explains Ihli. It is well known that SIS takes more time than an average assessment tool, and this is always likely to be the case. However, it is also well established that the more practice an interviewer has, the more efficient and effective the interview process. 

Further, a SIS interviewer has to be aware of verbal as well as non-verbal cues from respondents. Issues such as how to phrase a question, figuring out what items to explain in detail, determining if a break is needed, or bringing someone else in to ease the interview, are all a matter of intuition you develop with SIS interviews under your belt.

The AAIDD SIS training program incorporates practice throughout the training process. In Phase 2 of the training program, after the initial introduction, trainers conduct guided practices with trainees individually or in pairs with real respondents. This helps the trainees ease into the interview process and trainers provide hands-on feedback to the trainees. Reliability checks come later in the training process and these are designed to let the AAIDD trainers observe trainees conducting independent interviews in order to ascertain if they are conducting interviews reliably. An interviewer who does not have adequate practice is not likely to score the SIS reliably and hence will need further coaching.

Karen Hoffman, AAIDD Senior SIS Trainer explains, “One way to think about SIS practice is to understand that the Supports Intensity Scale has a lab aspect as well as a learning aspect, just like a biology class. As trainers, we need to see that an interviewer can learn the information and then apply it correctly.”

It is clear then that the best practice with SIS is to practice, practice, practice….