At PAR, we are always working on updating, enhancing, and creating new assessment offerings to help you better serve the needs of your clients. We are currently working hard on several new releases and wanted to take this opportunity to give you a sneak peek into what is coming soon. 

Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree (EDDT) 

Coming later this summer, PAR will introduce a more streamlined way to use the EDDT products—both online and on paper. This update to the EDDT will combine all three versions (Teacher, Parent, and Self-Report) into one manual, further simplifying the assessment of emotional disturbance (ED). Additionally, updates to the PARiConnect administration experience will allow users to decide at the time of administration which form they wish to use, enhancing flexibility. 

The EDDT is the first instrument of its kind to provide a standardized approach to the assessment of ED that maps on to all the federal IDEA criteria and addresses the broad emotional and behavioral nuances of children who may require special education services for ED. 

“This will update will help users by combining all the EDDT information into one manual so you don’t need to go to three different manuals in three separate places,” said PAR’s Director of Content & Production Carrie Champ Morera, PsyD, NCSP, LP. “And the 13 case studies in the manual use variations of the forms, so you have a wealth of examples of ways to adapt your use and raters’ perspectives.” 

Feifer Assessment of Childhood Trauma (FACT) 

Coming this fall, the FACT will help users determine the full educational impact of stress and trauma. Consisting of three separate forms: teacher, parent, and self-report, the FACT will provide a way to measure, from a neuropsychological perspective, how stress and trauma affect students in a school-based setting. 

“Customers are going to appreciate the insight this gives them when used in psychoeducational evaluations,” said Champ Morera. “In addition to measuring the physiological, emotional, academic, and behavioral impact of trauma, the FACT includes a resiliency cluster that can be used to measure a student's adaptation and coping skills.” 

The FACT will provide insight into the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional impact of trauma in the school environment and will assist clinicians in the diagnostic process as well as in creating and designing appropriate interventions. 

Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult, 2nd Ed. (BRIEF2A) 

Later this year, PAR will be introducing the BRIEF2A. In response to customer demand for updated normative data as well as a way to incorporate the vast research done on executive functioning in adults since the test was first published, this update to this gold-standard product will be useful for assessing adults with executive functioning difficulties, ADHD, ASD, traumatic brain injury, as well as many other clinical populations. 

The new edition offers a large standardization sample matched by age, sex, ethnicity, education level, and geographic region to recent nationwide population figures. A slight reduction in the length of the assessment offers more concise scales and reduces the time burden on the respondent. 

The BRIEF2A will have four indexes: Behavior Regulation, Emotion Regulation, Cognitive Regulation, and the Global Executive Composite, with nine scales. 

 

There is so much more to come! Check back frequently to learn the latest on what we are working on here at PAR.

This week’s blog was contributed by Carrie Champ Morera, PsyD, lead project and content director, and Theo Miron, PsyS, regional manager–educational assessments.

Why should psychologists and other clinicians assess for emotional disturbance (ED) in the school setting? Parents and caregivers of 8.3 million school-aged children (ages 4 to 17 years) have sought help from school staff or mental health professionals about their child’s emotional or behavioral difficulties. Approximately 7.5% of children ages 6 to 17 years used prescribed medication during the past 6 months for emotional or behavioral difficulties. Assessment of ED is necessary in the school setting to help children obtain the emotional and behavioral support services they need to be successful.

Over the past 20 years, the number of students served within special education has steadily increased, while the number of students being served under ED eligibilities has steadily decreased. For example, during the 2000–2001 school year, 6.29 million students received special education services with 7.6% of those students identified as having an ED. Although the population of students receiving special education services grew by almost one million children to 7.13 million over the next 18 years, only 5% were identified as having an ED during the 2018–2019 school year.

How can we improve ED identification and help children obtain the services they need to be successful in school? It is the school’s responsibility and a school psychologist’s professional role to find children who are struggling emotionally and behaviorally, identify them through the evaluation process, and then connect them with appropriate services and interventions so they can begin to heal and make educational, social, emotional, and behavioral progress. 

When completing assessments for ED, we need to carefully consider and adhere to specific eligibility criteria while distinguishing the difference between social maladjustment (SM) and ED. Practitioners also need to consider DSM-V-related diagnoses as well as the impact of trauma, adverse childhood experiences (ACES), and the pandemic on the child’s functioning. It is also imperative to be cognizant of racial disproportionality in determining eligibility for ED services (see NASP Position Statement: Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in Education).

Assessments of ED need to be comprehensive and include multiple tests and information from a variety of sources. Clinical interviews with the student, caregivers, and teachers, as well as observations of the student in the natural environment are paramount. Trauma, ACES, and the pandemic also need to be considered in the assessment of ED. Childhood adversity is a broad term that refers to a wide range of circumstances or events that pose a serious threat to a child’s physical or psychological wellbeing, including child abuse, neglect, divorce, bullying, poverty, and community violence. Adverse experiences can have profound consequences, particularly when they occur early in life, are chronic, and accumulate over time. Trauma is an outcome of exposure to adversity while adversities are the cause of trauma. Trauma affects everyone differently, depending on individual, family, and environmental risk, as well as protective factors.

Repeated or prolonged trauma in addition to the effects of the pandemic can have a litany of adverse outcomes on our children in the areas of cognition, brain development, behavior, emotions, mental health, physical health, and relationships. These factors need to be considered in a comprehensive evaluation for ED.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen a significant increase in kids struggling with both emotional and behavioral difficulties. This increase may lead to an uptick in the number of ED-related assessment referrals that come across our desks and the number of students who require special education services. This leads us into how we assess children for an ED and the benefits of using the Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree (EDDT).

Dr. Bryan Euler, the author of the EDDT, has worked as a school counselor, diagnostician, lead school psychologist, and a clinical psychologist. While working in the Albuquerque public schools, Dr. Euler teamed up with PAR to create the EDDT to provide a standardized approach to the assessment of ED. It was designed to directly address the framework of the federal ED eligibility criteria; for every component of the federal ED criteria, there’s a corresponding EDDT scale or cluster. The scales within the assessment are written to address these broad domains thoroughly, then help school psychologists apply the specific criteria to make informed decisions on both eligibility and programming.

The EDDT includes all the relevant aspects of the federal ED criteria. It contains scales and clusters that address each of the specific ED criteria. The structure of the EDDT walks the practitioner through each area of the federal ED criteria.

• Section 1 reviews the important exclusionary items to address “an inability to learn that can’t be explained by other factors.”
• Section 2 Part A examines the 4 important characteristics we look for in ED (building/maintaining relationships, inappropriate behaviors/emotions, depression factors, and physical symptoms and fears).
• Section 2 Part B serves as a screener for characteristics of both ADHD and schizophrenia/psychosis.
• Section 3 assesses the characteristics of social maladjustment.
• Section 4 measures the level of severity, where we examine the magnitude of the symptoms and characteristics the student is exhibiting. 
• Section 5 helps determine the level of educational impact that these issues may be causing in school.

Bryan Euler, PhD, describes the benefits of the EDDT and the importance of multiple informants, including the student’s perspective, here.

There are several best practices to keep in mind with the EDDT: Include the viewpoint of multiple raters (teacher, parent, and/or self) from different settings (school, home, and community). Use the EDDT as part of a comprehensive evaluation to determine ED eligibility. In addition to the EDDT, be sure to include qualitative information such as interviews (from the student, parents, and/or teachers) and observations across school settings to supplement the data received on the EDDT.

Carrie Champ Morera, PsyD and Theo Miron, PsyS will present on the EDDT at the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) annual convention in February. In their presentation, Assessing Emotional Disturbance in Schools Using the Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree (EDDT), they will explore the features and trends in ED and investigate the structure and use of the EDDT. If you attend NASP, feel free to stop by the PAR booth to learn more about how PAR can meet your assessment needs.

Let the EDDT family of products help you find the way when navigating the challenging path of an emotional disturbance diagnosis. The EDDT family of products offer school/clinical professionals a standardized approach to gathering information from parents, teachers, and the student him or herself about the individuals functioning in the areas that make up the federal ED criteria. Now training on how to use the EDDT products is available on the PAR Training Portal.

 

Whether you are a long-time user and want a greater understanding of the products or are considering purchasing for the first time, this course will give you greater insight into the assessment of emotional disturbance, the decisions made when developing the EDDT, and how the different components work together to promote a comprehensive assessment of the student across school and home environments.

 

The PAR Training Portal is a free, on-demand resource available 24/7.

 

Visit partrainingportal.com today!

 

Simply use your parinc.com account to log in. Don’t have a free account? It’s easy to register.

 

Students with an emotional disturbance (ED) can be difficult to assess and identify due to the unique and diverse nature of the disorder.

A new white paper discusses social–emotional evaluations with experts in the field, helping you to identify emotional disturbance using a variety of PAR products. The white paper will help you make more confident and informed decisions about eligibility for an ED diagnosis.

This free white paper discusses the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, 2^nd Ed. (BRIEF2), the Pediatric Behavior Rating Scale (PBRS), the Adolescent Anger Rating Scale (AARS), and the Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree (EDDT).

Download your copy today!

 

Assessment of emotional disturbance (ED) just got faster and more convenient.

Administration and scoring for the Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree Self-Report Form (EDDT-SR) and a new EDDT Multi-Rater Summary Report are now available on our online platform, PARiConnect.

From 2011 to 2018, the number of students who received special education services in U.S. public schools increased from 6.4 to 7 million—about 14% of enrollment. Of that number, 5% have been identified as having ED, a condition that has historically been difficult to assess and identify.

Gathering information from multiple perspectives is an important component of ED assessment. The EDDT, EDDT Parent Form, and EDDT-SR are designed to be used together to help professionals develop a more thorough and well-rounded picture of student functioning. These standardized assessment tools map directly onto the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) criteria for ED to help professionals determine and document student eligibility for special education services.

Administer and score all three EDDT tests online and generate the Multi-Rater Summary Report at no additional cost for a limited time! This new report provides significant score discrepancies, discrepancies between raters, and profiles of ED scales and indicates if scores meet the IDEA criteria for an ED diagnosis to help you get students the help they need.

Learn more about the EDDT.

 

The Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree (EDDT) family of instruments gives you insight from three distinct viewpoints—teacher (EDDT), parent (EDDT-PF), and self (EDDT-SR). 

Though each form can be used individually, the full potential of the EDDT family is realized by garnering a trio of perspectives. See the advantages gained by in a case study presented in our new white paper by Jennifer A. Greene, PhD, and EDDT author Bryan L. Euler, PhD. You’ll also get information about the EDDT Multi-Rater Summary Form, a tool that can help you interpret statistically significant discrepancies between raters.

Learn more about the EDDT family.

Last week, we presented the first part of a two-part series on unraveling the ED/SM dilemma. This week, we talk to the experts on how to use various assessments to evaluate emotional disturbance and social maladjustment.

Catch up on last week's blog here.

School staff members often have difficulties when it comes to assessing a student who may have emotional disturbance (ED), and getting hard data to back up the decision can be just as difficult. PAR spoke with experts in the field about the use of various instruments that have proven to be useful in gathering the hard data needed in order to make an informed decision about ED eligibility.

Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, Second Edition (BRIEF2)

Peter K. Isquith, PhD, is a practicing developmental school neuropsychologist and instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He’s the coauthor of the BRIEF2, the new BRIEF2 Interpretive Guide, and the Tasks of Executive Control (TEC).

PAR: Why would it be helpful to include a measure of executive functioning in the assessment of a student being evaluated for an ED eligibility?

PI: In general, the purpose of including the BRIEF2 when asking about ED is to know whether or not the child actually has an emotional disturbance or if his or her self-regulation gives that appearance. So, if a child is referred who has frequent severe tantrums, we want to know if this is an emotional disturbance or if it is part of a broader self-regulatory deficit. That is, is the child melting down because he or she truly experiences emotional distress? Or is he or she doing so because of poor global self-regulation? To answer this, I would want to look at two things:
Is there evidence of an actual emotional concern? Does the child exhibit mood problems, anxiety, or other emotional issues?
And does the child's self-regulation have an impact on other domains, including attention, language, and behavior? That is, is he or she physically, motorically, attentionally, and/or verbally impulsive or poorly regulated?

If the first answer is yes, then there is likely an emotional disturbance. But if it is no, then there may be a self-regulatory issue that is more broad. By using the BRIEF2, clinicians can quickly learn if a student is impulsive or poorly regulated in other domains, not just emotionally. A BRIEF2 profile with high Inhibit and Emotional Control scales suggests that the child is more globally disinhibited. If it is primarily the Emotional Control scale that’s elevated, and there is an emotional concern like mood problems, then it may be more of an emotional disturbance.

Pediatric Behavior Rating Scale (PBRS)

Richard Marshall, EdD, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Educational and Psychological Studies in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at the USF College of Medicine. In addition to the PBRS, published in 2008, he is the author of 2011’s The Middle School Mind: Growing Pains in Early Adolescent Brains.

PAR: How does the PBRS fit into the diagnosis of ED?

RM: Two gaps in practice prompted us to develop the PBRS. The first was that the assessment instrument available at the time had few if any items about rage attacks, irritability, assaultive aggression, and other symptoms associated with early onset bipolar disorder. Hence, despite significantly abnormal behaviors, results of assessments were often within normal limits because they failed to capture symptoms of interest. So, our first goal was to include these new behaviors into parent and teacher ratings.

A second problem was that symptom overlap between ADHD and early onset bipolar disorder made it difficult to differentiate ADHD and bipolar disorder. The problem is that the standard treatment for ADHD, stimulant medication, induces mania in individuals with bipolar disorder. Thus, diagnosis accuracy is paramount.

What we learned during the PBRS norming sample was that students with ADHD and bipolar disorder produce a similar pattern of scores, but students with bipolar disorder produce a higher level of scores. That is, both groups have similar symptoms, but individuals with bipolar disorder have more serious symptoms. Thus, the PBRS can assist clinicians in differentiating individuals with mood disorders from those with ADHD.

PAR: Decades of research in cognitive neuroscience, combined with changes in our understanding and classification of mental illness in children, impels us to continually reevaluate theory and practice. Formulated more than a half-century ago, the idea of social maladjustment is one of those policies in desperate need of revision. In 1957, the idea of being able to identify students who were socially maladjusted may have seemed reasonable.

RM: There are two problems with this idea. First, the government has never defined social maladjustment, and states (and practitioners) have been left without clear ways of differentiating students who are or are not socially maladjusted. Second, without a clear definition, the concept of social maladjustment has created what Frank Gresham refers to as a “false dichotomy” that is used to exclude students from receiving interventions that would help them and to which they are entitled.

Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree (EDDT)

Bryan Euler, PhD, author of the EDDT as well as the EDDT Parent Form and the new EDDT Self-Report Form, has a background in clinical and counseling psychology, special education, and rehabilitation counseling. He has 27 years of experience as a school psychologist working in urban and rural settings with multicultural student populations.

PAR: Can you describe the overall benefits of the EDDT system and what makes it unique from other instruments?

BE: The EDDT series was designed to map directly onto the IDEA criteria for emotional disturbance, which are different from and broader than constructs such as depression or conduct. The federal criteria are, some might say, unfortunately wide and “fuzzy,” rather than clean-cut. The EDDT scales are written to address these broad domains thoroughly and help school psychologists apply the unwieldy criteria.

The EDDT also includes a social maladjustment scale (SM). Since students who are only SM are not ED eligible, the EDDT is useful in ruling out these students and in identifying those for whom both conditions may be present. This can be helpful with program decisions, so children or adolescents who are primarily “fragile” are not placed in classrooms with those who have both depression/anxiety and severe aggression.

The EDDT also has an Educational Impact scale, which helps to document that the student’s social-emotional and behavioral issues are having educational effects, which IDEA requires for eligibility. All of the EDDT forms include a Severity scale, which helps to gauge this and guide service design.

The EDDT Parent and Self-Report forms also include Resiliency and Motivation scales, which help to identify a student’s strengths and determine what may most effectively modify his or her behavior. The presence of all these factors in the EDDT scales is intended to facilitate the actual practice of school psychology with ED and related problems.

PAR: Why is it important to have multiple informants as part of an evaluation?

BE: Having multiple informants is, in effect, one way of having multiple data sources. Multiple data sources add incremental validity, or accuracy, to evaluations as well as breadth of perspective. A rough analogy might be to lab tests, which are often done in panels, or multiples, rather than in singles, to help with insight, efficiency, and decisions.

PAR: What are the benefits of having the student perspective as part of an evaluation with multiple informants?

BE: Having a student’s perspective on his or her behavior and social-emotional adjustment is a critical but sometimes overlooked component of assessment, especially for ED and ADHD evaluations. If only teacher anecdotal reports, teacher-completed ratings, and behavior observations are used, this vastly increases the chance that the evaluation will be skewed toward externalized behavior like aggression and rule-breaking. Internal factors such as depression or anxiety, which may be causing the behavior, will be deemphasized, if noted at all. Research corroborates that if teachers rate a student, and ratings are also obtained from the parent and the child, the teacher results tend to highlight difficult, disruptive behavior, while other ratings may result in other insights. Relatedly, in children and adolescents, depression is often primarily manifest in irritability or anger rather than sadness. If there is no observable sadness and only problem behavior, teacher ratings may understandably focus on what stands out to them and complicates classroom management.

Even if students minimize their depression, anxiety, or social problems, they do sometimes rate one or more of these as “at risk.” This can provide a window into subjective emotional pain that may otherwise be obscured. Finally, gathering student-derived data enhances school psychology professional practice. Psychologists who complete child custody or juvenile corrections evaluations gather data directly from the child to facilitate insight, which can also aid in school psychology.

Adolescent Anger Rating Scale (AARS)

Darla DeCarlo, Psy S, has been a clinical assessment consultant with PAR for nine years. She is a licensed mental health counselor and certified school psychologist in the state of Florida.

PAR: Can you speak about your use of the AARS in ED evaluations?

DD: Within the context of assessing those students referred for behavior-related evaluations, I found the AARS to be a great compliment to the various other instruments I used during the evaluation process. Making an ED determination is a sensitive issue, and I wanted as much hard data as possible to help me make a well-informed decision. The AARS allowed me to assess a student’s level of anger and his or her response to anger through a self-report. Limited instruments are able to give clinicians information that can help them look at the ED/SM issue. The AARS helped me identify students who were at risk for diagnoses of conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, or ADHD. Combine these results with results on the EDDT and other instruments, and I was able to get a good picture (not to mention some hard data) on whether SM factored into the student’s issues.

PAR: What about interventions? Does the AARS help with that in any way?

DD: Anger control, as defined by the AARS, “is a proactive cognitive behavioral method used to respond to reactive and/or instrumental provocations. Adolescents who display high levels of anger control utilize the cognitive processes and skills necessary to manage anger related behaviors.”

What I liked about the instrument is that it qualifies the type of anger the student is displaying and then gives the clinician information about whether or not the student displays anger control or even has the capacity for anger control. As a school psychologist, I needed to know if the student already had the skills to follow through with some of the possible interventions we might put in place or if we needed to teach him or her some skills before attempting the intervention. For example, something as simple as telling a student to count to 10 or walk away when he or she feels anger escalating may seem like an easy task, but not all students recognize the physiological symptoms associated with their outbursts. Therefore, asking them to recognize the symptoms and then act by calming themselves is pointless. I have seen this mistake many times, and have made the mistake myself by suggesting what I thought was a useful and effective intervention, only to find out later that the intervention failed simply because the student did not possess the skills to perform the task. The AARS gave me information that helped guard against making this type mistake.

As with every evaluation, the instruments we choose in our assessments are important, but even the best instrument is useless without the keen skills of well-trained school staff to properly administer and interpret results with accuracy and precision.

This is the first part in a two-part series. Come back next week to learn more from our experts and authors.

Katherine is an 8 year old who attends public school. Following a traumatic event, she began to insist on wearing a helmet to school and during class. When school personnel requested she remove the helmet, she adamantly refused, expressing fear that the ceiling would fall and they would all be killed. Her grades have dropped considerably, and she is having problems socializing with peers. Her mother reports similar disruptions at home. Katherine’s grades have dropped to Ds and Fs, and her behavior has become disruptive in class. She cries frequently and has most recently expressed a desire to stay home from school.

Jeremy is a fifth grader who currently receives special education services under the category of emotional disturbance (ED) and other health impaired (OHI). One year after his initial ED diagnosis, he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). His original ED eligibility was based on violent behavior in kindergarten and first grade. Once it became evident that his violent outbursts were related to characteristics associated with his ASD diagnosis and appropriate interventions were put into place, Jeremy was able to function more effectively at school. His grades are above average, and he has not experienced any behavioral outbursts since second grade. His parents are planning to place him in a private school and have requested an evaluation to eliminate the ED diagnosis. They believe the OHI eligibility is the most appropriate eligibility for him; the school administration and teachers agree.

Brian is a 15 year old who was expelled from his last school for calling in a bomb threat. The administration at his home school considers him occasionally volatile and “a constant liar.” His mother confirms the lying and additionally reports daily fights between Brian and her live-in boyfriend. She states that “he hangs with a bad crowd, and his behavior is out of control.” Brian’s teachers describe him as a loner who appears sad throughout the school day. His grades have dropped from Bs to Ds and Fs.

These three cases exemplify the diversity and difficulty inherent with evaluating students who have been referred for a comprehensive assessment due to academic and/or behavioral concerns.

History of ED Prevalence

In the 2001-2002 school year, there were 6.3 million students in special education programs. Of these, 473,663 were classified as emotionally disturbed, according to the National Center for Education Statistics—a number that had increased 18.4% from the previous 10 years (1991-1992). By 2002, ED had become the fourth most prevalent of the 13 exceptionalities served by special education, and there was every indication that an increase in both number and proportion for this group would continue to occur.

Instead, we began to see a decline. By the 2011-2012 school year, only 373,000 students were classified as having ED.  It appeared the numbers were dwindling.

Yet, recent research has reported that parents and caregivers of more than 8 million school-aged children ages 4 to 17 years have sought help from a mental health professional or school staff member about their child’s emotional or behavioral difficulties.

Clearly, questions arise. What accounts for the disparity between those asking for help and those receiving services? How do we account for what appears to be an under-identification of ED in the schools? What can we put in place to stop the decline and get those who require help the services they need?

The Difficulty with ED Eligibility

Students with emotional disturbance are especially difficult to assess and identify, and the evaluation itself is time consuming. Whether determining, changing, or removing eligibility, clinicians usually have an idea of who needs help emotionally. However, determining whether a student qualifies for special education services within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) category of ED can be complicated.

One of the greatest challenges in determining eligibility services involves the social maladjustment/emotional disturbance dichotomy. The term socially maladjusted (SM) has not been defined by IDEA. The federal definition of ED, which was written in 1957 and remains virtually unchanged, leaves the operationalization of the criteria set forth by IDEA to individuals and organizations in the field along with state and local educational agencies, who are responsible for implementing special education services.

To further complicate matters, we have only recently begun to question the longstanding belief that SM students externalize their behaviors, while ED students internalize their behaviors. However, since ED was defined in 1957, neuroscience has shown that “brain differences underlie both internalizing and externalizing behaviors,” says Richard M. Marshall, EdD, PhD, author of the Pediatric Behavior Rating Scale (PBRS). “From a neurobiological perspective, therefore, the only difference between the two is the expression of behavior. There is little evidence that students with externalizing behaviors are any more capable of controlling their emotions or behavior than students with internalizing disorders. Yet students with internalizing disorders are provided with interventions, while students with externalizing behaviors are punished.”

In addition to the difficulties defining and determining SM versus ED, the federal criteria definition includes two potential areas of ED eligibility that are very broad and have no clinical definition:

• “An inability to build and maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.”


• “Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.”Also, the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has never provided official guidelines for potential exclusionary criteria for an ED diagnosis such as severity, educational impact, and duration. Although some feedback on these issues has been provided, no formal guidelines have been published. The federal definition does allude to some clinical conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia), but it doesn’t provide guidelines for how these conditions should be diagnosed.Lastly, we cannot negate the fact that in the past, psychologists lacked psychometrically sound instruments to provide them with the hard data needed to substantiate a well-informed decision in regards to ED eligibility.

Come back next week to learn more on this topic from our experts.

You may know the Emotional Disturbance Decision Tree™ (EDDT™) family recently welcomed a new member—the EDDT–Self-Report Form (EDDT-SR). Here are five things you may not know about this trio of assessment tools.

1. The EDDT is the first instrument of its kind to provide a standardized approach to the assessment of emotional disturbance (ED). The EDDT encompasses all the federal criteria and addresses the broad emotional and behavioral nuances of children who may require special education services for ED.


2. The EDDT–Parent Form (EDDT-PF) and EDDT-SR are available in Spanish, facilitating use with Hispanic/Latino clients.


3. Multi-Rater Summary Forms can be used with all three forms to review responses from multiple raters over time to create a well-rounded picture of an individual's functioning.


4. The EDDT-SR Professional Manual offers additional analysis and scores that have been developed for all three EDDT versions including base rates for discrepancies between raters and reliable change scores.


5. The EDDT, EDDT-PF, and EDDT-SR are all Likert-style response forms that can be completed in less than 20 minutes each, making them easy to administer and time efficient.

For more information on the EDDT, EDDT-PF, and EDDT-SR, visit their individual product pages.

The third in the EDDT series, the EDDT-SR allows clinicians to assess emotional disturbance from the perspective of a child or adolescent. A standardized, norm-referenced assessment, the EDDT-SR is completed by individuals ages 9-18 years and is intended to be used in conjunction with the EDDT parent or teacher versions to develop a well-rounded picture of an individual’s functioning.

The EDDT-SR:

• Uses criteria presented in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA) with scales that map directly on to this criteria.


• Provides additional analysis and scores developed for all three EDDT versions including base rates for discrepancies between raters and reliable change scores.


• Includes scales that measure Inability to Build or Maintain Relationships, Inappropriate Behaviors or Feelings, Pervasive Mood/Depression, and Physical Symptoms or Fears, and clusters that measure Level of Severity, Motivation, and Resilience.

Spanish forms are available!

To order the EDDT-SR or learn more, click here!