Computer applications that streamline test scoring and other procedures in occupational therapy.

Elizabcrh A. Muik,IIS, is a Rehabilitation Engineer, Ne''\'ington Children's Hospital, NeWington, Connecticut, There is Ettle 31'gument that computers have affected activItieS In our dadl' lives. from banking to programming a horne video recorder, At Newington Children's Hospital, staff of the occupational therapv depanment and rehabilitation engineering Department have customized a computer program to assist occupational therapists in scoring standardized tests, making a tediOUS, repetitive chore less time consuming and m(xe error resistant, We use many standardized tests in the occup;nional therapv department, including the Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (\IMI) (Beery, 1989). the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of J\ilotor Proficiency (BOTMP) (Bruininks, 1978), the Peabody Developmental Moral' Scales (PDMS) (Folio & Fewell, 1974), the Test of Visual PerceplUal Skills (Non-Motor) (TVPS) (Gardner, 1982). and the]ebsen Hand Function Test GHFT) Gebsen, Taylor, Trjeschmann, Trotter, & Howard, 1969; Taylor, Sand, & Jebsen, 1973), Once the subtest scores obtained through patient testing are entered on the test form, most tests require the therapist to use tables to look up the standard scores, the percentile ranks, and the age equivalents. We deCided to expedite this process b\' entering the numbers from the test tables into a lvlacinrosh n. computer l and then customizing a spreadsheet program to automatically ,-etrieve and display the test scores, AJthough computerized scoring exists for several tests used in educmion (DLM Teaching Resources, AJlen, Tex;]s), to date there is no published documentation of similar endeavors for scoring occupational therapy evaluations.