The results of PAR’s seventh annual Pay it Forward program are in!
Each year, we ask our customers to choose a charity from a short list of deserving organizations. This culminates in PAR donating $5,000 on behalf of our customers to the charity that receives the most votes.
This year’s selected charity is: Family Promise!
Family Promise is the leading national nonprofit organization addressing the issue of family homelessness. Their mission is to help homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence through a community-based response.
To our customers who participated, thank you for helping us Pay it Forward.
In 1992, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed an annual observance of International Day of Persons With Disabilities. Since that time, this day has been dedicated to promoting the rights and well-being of individuals with disabilities, increasing awareness of people with disabilities, and furthering the rights of those with disabilities in every political, social, economic, and cultural sphere.
The theme for this year, “Fighting for rights in the post-COVID era,” recognizes that people who live with disabilities are among the most affected populations from this pandemic—with an increase in poor outcomes, reduced access to health care, lack of mental health resources, and inadequate emergency services for those with special needs. The pandemic brought to light the need to make meaningful investments in communities and services that reduce the barriers that individuals with disabilities face.
Learn more about International Day of Persons With Disabilities as well as initiatives from the World Health Organization.
The National Academy of Neuropsychology (NAN) will hold its 41st annual conference virtually on December 9 and 10. The conference features live presentations as well on on-demand sessions, with a total of 25.5 CE credits available.
PAR is once again a proud sponsor of this event. Additionally, PAR will offer four poster presentations, including two featuring authors Steven G. Feifer, DEd, and Cecil R. Reynolds, PhD. PAR’s four poster presentations will include a deeper dive into the NAB, the FAR, and Identi-Fi.
If you are attending NAN, visit our virtual booth to receive a promo code for 15% off all PAR products plus free shipping. Create a library of assessment instruments—for every domain, across all age spans—PAR has it all. All the tests. All the tools. All from a company you trust. View PAR’s neuropsych assessments, and build your battery today.
There is still time to register for NAN. You won’t want to miss this year's lineup of presentations.
All year long, but especially during this time of year, we at PAR are thankful for our loyal customers. We are grateful for the trust you put in us to provide you with the tools you need to help those you serve.
In observance of Thanksgiving, the PAR offices will be closed from 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, November 24 until 8 a.m. on Monday, November 29.
May your Thanksgiving be filled with happiness, joy, warmth, and togetherness.
ChecKIT on PARiConnect offers you a centralized location for brief, commonly used mental health checklists. Now we’ve added the Geriatric Depression Scale–Short Form (GDS-SF) to our ChecKIT offerings! This 15-item checklist efficiently screens for depression in older adults.
The ChecKIT family of products are simple checklists that can be administered, scored, and tracked via PARiConnect. They can be mixed-and-matched within the ChecKIT family, so clinicians can easily build the bundle that is right for each client. Administration and scoring are provided together in one purchase.
What’s on ChecKIT?
NEW! The Geriatric Depression Scale–Short Form (GDS-SF) is a 15-item checklist designed to screen for depression in older adults.
NEW! The Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST) is a 24-item questionnaire developed to screen for alcohol dependence and alcohol-related behaviors.
The Language Acculturation Meter (LAM) provides a framework for testing culturally and linguistically diverse individuals to help choose appropriate assessment instruments.
The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) is a 9-item depression screener designed for use with adults in a primary care setting that has garnered overwhelming popularity in research and clinical practice.
The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) is a 7-item screener for anxiety. Based on the diagnostic criteria for generalized anxiety disorder in the DSM-IV ™, the GAD-7 is ideal for use in research and clinical practice.
Flexible purchase model
Purchase multiple units of checklists up front, and decide which checklists you want to use when you are ready to administer them.
Score reports and technical papers
After administration, you’ll receive a score report that offers interpretive text that can be easily incorporated into your professional reports. You can also export data for a ready-to-analyze dataset to facilitate research. Furthermore, each ChecKIT product offers a complimentary technical paper that explains the development behind the measure.
Easily track progress
ChecKIT allows you to save repeated administrations in one location and regularly track client symptoms across therapy sessions.
Check out ChecKIT and the new GDS-SF today!
Today is Veterans Day in the U.S., and we want to take a moment to pay tribute, honor, and thank those who have served in our military.
PAR would like to sincerely thank every individual who made the choice to serve our country and defend our freedom. You chose to leave familiar surroundings, family, and friends in service to your country. Your sacrifice has made a true difference in the life of every American and is a debt we can never truly repay. We value and appreciate your selflessness. It is the foundation that our country is built on.
We’d also like to give a special thanks to the members of our PAR staff who have served in our military:
Adam Barrett-Clarke
Teri Lyon
Mike Nolan
Jarris Suggs
Thank you for your service and thank you to all veterans on this special day!
PAR is excited to announce the release In-Person e-Stimulus Books for the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery® (NAB®) modules!
The NAB Attention Module, NAB Executive Functions Module, NAB Memory Module, NAB Spatial Module, NAB Language Module, and NAB Screening Module In-Person e-Stimulus Books are convenient and more hygienic alternatives to paper stimulus books and cards. They are designed to be used via tablet during face-to-face administration. Be sure to download our new white paper prior to administering for guidance on how to use e-Stimulus Books.
Did you purchase a NAB kit or paper stimulus book prior to November 3, 2021? We’re pleased to offer the In-Person e-Stimulus Book (for in-person administration via tablet) to you at no charge for a limited time! Just call 1.800.331.8378 or email us at CS@parinc.com with your request.
PAR offers many more In-Person e-Stimulus Books to provide you with the flexibility and confidence you need when administering tests. Check out our e-Stimulus Books web page to learn more.
November 8–12 celebrates the important work of school psychologists. This year, the theme of the week is “Let’s Get in GEAR,” with GEAR standing for a challenge to grow, engage in best practices, advocate for access, and rise despite challenges.
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has put together a list of activities to help commemorate this week.
Engage in advocacy. Whether you want to reinforce the importance of school psychology on a local or national level, NASP provides easy ways to do so.
Get the word out on social media. Whether you are active on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, NASP provides some sample text and images you can use to get the word out on any platform. Use the hashtag #SchoolPsychWeek.
Encourage activities in your school. Whether on an individual level or class-wide, NASP provides a list of activities that reinforce the theme of the week.
School psychologists—thank you for all you do to help schools, students, staff, and communities to thrive!
This week’s blog was contributed by Jeremy Sharp, PhD, licensed psychologist and clinical director at the Colorado Center for Assessment & Counseling and the host of the Testing Psychologist Podcast. Dr. Sharp earned his undergraduate degree in experimental psychology from the University of South Carolina and earned his master’s degree and doctorate in counseling psychology from Colorado State University. He specializes in psychological and neuropsychological evaluation of children and adolescents and provides private practice consulting for psychologists and other mental health professionals who want to start or grow psychological testing services in their practices. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife (also a therapist) and two kids.
Have you seen that social media meme on “The last normal school year” that’s been going around? It has one column listing kindergarten through Grade 7 (students’ current year) and another column showing their last “normal” school year, which was, at this point, THREE GRADES AGO. Essentially, a kid who is now in seventh grade hasn’t had a typical school year since they were a fourth grader. The math makes sense, but it truly blew my mind. That means that current kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders have never experienced a typical school year. Eighth graders are just now getting a real sense of what middle school is like (for better or worse). Though the pandemic is far from over, psychologists and other mental health folks have several considerations to keep in mind as students encounter their third school year of the pandemic.
First, the impact of the pandemic cannot be underestimated. At baseline, children are generally more vulnerable to the stress of a pandemic because they have more difficulty understanding the scope and circumstances of a global event than adults. Studies around the world are consistently documenting the negative effects on kids. A variety of personal and environmental issues have been proposed as contributing factors. For example, authors cite increased parental stress, increased risk of abuse and domestic violence, and increased exposure to social media as potential reasons for elevated mental health symptoms. Physiologically, there is some evidence to suggest that kids and adolescents are experiencing higher levels of cortisol, eating poorer diets (or experiencing notable food insecurity), and missing out on the brain development that comes from participating in novel social and academic situations. And children have varying responses to the pandemic. Variables that contribute to a child’s response include prior exposure to traumatic events, socioeconomic status (SES), and disability status. Regarding specific mental health symptoms, research shows that anxiety, loneliness, and depression are the most common mental health concerns to arise from the last several months. Others have described increased clinginess, distraction, irritability, and fear for family members’ safety. I’ve experienced this firsthand, as my eight-year-old daughter developed significant and acute separation anxiety upon going back to school this fall.
What about the impact on academic skills during the last 18 months? Data is still emerging, but some have attempted to estimate the decline in achievement. Researchers suggest that kids, on average, may have acquired about 65% of the reading skills and 37–50% of the math skills they would have gained in a typical school year. Studies that look at the influence of missing instructional days have shown that crystallized intelligence decreases by 1% of a standard deviation for every 10 days of missed learning. These numbers are simply estimates, however, as many highlighted the fact that kids didn’t only miss out on instruction, they also missed out on timely assessment and the resulting feedback or adaptation to their learning that comes from knowing their level of achievement in real time. But again, individual and environmental characteristics matter. Learners with a growth mindset adapted more quickly to online learning compared to those with a fixed mindset approach. Motivated learners and those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds experienced less decline or even made gains in some cases (i.e., reading skills in higher-SES kids).
Given these concerns, how can we adjust our expectations for this school year? First, we must keep in mind that kids will be coming into this school year with widely varying degrees of achievement and learning from the past year. This exaggerated version of the typical “summer setback” will likely show wider gaps between the kids with access to food, internet, financial stability, and parental stability and those without. Kids with identified learning or mental health concerns are also likely to be further behind. Social–emotional needs may be higher across the board.
As mental health folks, we need to recognize that our assessments and interventions for the next 6–12 months have a huge asterisk beside them. We should be less confident identifying learning and behavior disorders, knowing that kids are in an ongoing period of adjustment (at best) or trauma (at worst). We can test academic and social–emotional functioning more frequently to keep a handle on kids’ evolving needs. Children will likely need more instruction and more review. Providing stability and predictability will be important. Giving kids the benefit of the doubt and being deliberate as we consider more externalizing disorders (i.e., oppositional defiant disorder) is also crucial. Our report recommendations may shift from providing numerous, long-term recommendations to making sure we are only recommending what kids and families need right now. Relatedly, we can assure families that our findings may not be permanent, and that we can help them navigate the next several months by providing updated, brief evaluations throughout the school year.
RELATED POST: Dr. Sharp discusses trauma-informed assessment
Finally, a brief word on assessment using personal protective equipment (PPE). We don’t know much about whether or how the use of PPE affects assessment results. Limited research with adults (using the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery [NAB]) showed lower scores on the Language Index but no other differences. If you’re still testing with PPE, like many of us are, try to choose the option(s) that provide the most protection for you and the client with the least amount of deviation from standardization.
Ultimately, kids going back to school is a positive step for the vast majority of us. As assessment clinicians, this is just another time for us to practice flexibility and think outside the box with our jobs. It won’t do for us to administer tests and interventions robotically—we need to be cognizant of kids’ individual needs as we do our best to support them.
RELATED POST: Assess trauma symptoms exhibited at school
Catch up with the Testing Psychologist podcast on their website, via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or on Spotify.
Trauma is the leading cause of mortality in children. Adverse childhood experiences are occurring at a staggering frequency, and they have significant downstream effects on behavior and learning potential. But kids can’t thrive at school unless they feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.
As they return to school this year, it’s imperative to quickly assess how severely your students have been affected by trauma—including pandemic-related trauma—and how it’s impacting their behavior and performance at school.
Developed by noted school psychologist and educational neuropsychologist Steven G. Feifer, DEd, the FACT Teacher Form can help. It’s the first comprehensive instrument measuring the impact of stress and trauma on children’s (ages 4–18 years) behavior and performance in school from the teacher’s perspective. It’s being made available for immediate use now while the full FACT—which will include parent and self-reports—is being developed.
Armed with the information provided by the FACT Teacher Form, you can formulate targeted interventions that better meet your students’ needs. Learn more at parinc.com/FACT_Teacher