Rehabilitation and education are faced with the growing need for adequate and appropriate assessment tools for over 9,000 congenitally deaf-blind persons in this country. These tools are needed to help form the basis for evaluation of these clients/students so that programs appropriate to their specific needs can be determined. In the past, assessment of the functional development of this population has been based on tests standardized on populations of non-handicapped individuals. These measuring primarily language abilities, and experiential factors. Observational procedures can examine the spontaneous behavior of subjects over a long period of time. This is an alternative to standardized instruments. One of these in current use is the Basic Life Skills Screening Inventory. This instrument was developed in 1982 for the purpose of assisting educators and counselors in establishing the readiness of deaf-blind, developmentally disabled clients/students for vocational and life skills training. Though useful in its original form, this instrument has two major limitations. One is the fact that the rater is given only limited choices, resulting in a ceiling effect and a pronounced skew of many of its scales. Another limitation is its lengthy 283 item format, requiring too much administration time to be practical on a daily basis. The present study focused on making needed modifications in this instrument that would help alleviate these limitations, and continue to maintain high psychometric properties within the instrument. In doing this, rater choices were expanded from three (3) to five (5) column headings, and the instrument was reduced from 283 items to 145 items. This study was designed to answer the following questions: (1) Can the Basic Life Skills Screening Inventory be modified in such a way as to give the rater a greater response choice, thus allowing for a more refined assessment? (2) Can the 283 item, Basic Life Skills Screening Inventory be shortened by approximately 50%, to allow for an easier and more practical administration, and continue to maintain high psychometric properties? Results indicate that, despite the modifications, a very high overall consistency among the items was maintained with a total average alpha of 9935.5.

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The diploma thesis deals with development and education in families with a child with dual sensory impairment, namely, from mother's point of view. The objective is to analyse stories of selected mothers of children with this particular disability, to explore the course of development and education involving deafblind children from different points of view (pedagogical, psychological etc.). The author of this thesis tries to find out about mothers' experiences and models of behaviour during pregnancy and afterwards. It focuses on acceptance of the disabled child within (and possibly outside) the family. In addition, the thesis explores reactions of mothers and others to a child with disability, it outlines the subsequent course of development and education in various periods of life. The particular emphasis is put on specific ways, by which these mothers developed their children during different activites (plays, conpensatory senses development, communication system development, independence of deafblind children etc.). It also describes developmental delays (emotional, social and cognitive functioning). Education options for deafblind are also mentioned. The stories are then compared to each other, as well as to selected literature from different countries. At the end of this thesis, practical...