Dimensions of Communication. Part I: Developing a Communication Profile [and] Part II: Designing an Intervention Plan. An Instrument To Assess the Communication Skills and Behaviors of Individuals with Disabilities.

This manual presents an assessment instrument designed to help teachers, educational specialists, speech-language therapists, psychologists, and other service providers evaluate the communication skills of children, adolescents, and young adults who have multiple disabilities, including severe or profound mental retardation and deafblindness. It offers a qualitative approach to characterize the forms, breadth, and attributes of an individual's communication behaviors when speech may or may not be present, and provides a process that links assessment results to intervention planning. There are two parts to the instrument. "Part I: Developing a Communication Profile," provides a scale that may be used to rate six specific qualities, or dimensions, of expressive and receptive communication behaviors. Part 1 allows evaluators to generate a broad profile of an individual's communication skills and behaviors. "Part II: Designing an Intervention Plan," is designed to be used to develop appropriate communication goals for the individual, based upon the ratings obtained in Part 1. Its usefulness is enhanced by numerous examples and descriptions of goals and interventions that can be considered for application in the school, community, and home. The manual includes a case illustration and a recording booklet containing forms and guidelines for recording information obtained during the evaluation. (CR)