An interpretative profile technique for use with the Vineland Social Maturity Scale

Abstract

Recently, Iscoe") has presented a profile technique for use with the Vineland Social Maturity Scale (VSMS) which allows for an overview of the developmental status of a child in various areas of personal functioning such as communication, locomotion, care of personal needs and similar activities. This technique, while useful, has certain shortcomings. This article offers a modification of this profile technique which should prove useful to clinicians working with children suspected of having developmental difficulties.With the profile technique suggested by Iscoe (2), no provision is made for plotting the scatter within a given category such as communication, for example, nor can adequate account be taken of equivocal items; i. e., items scored as plusminus. Thus, if the highest plus item were plotted within a category, as suggested in Iscoe's technique, it would not provide for the scattered minus items that may occur below it. Similarly, if the highest consecutive plus item is plotted, no provision is made for the srattered non-consecutive plus items occurring above it. In either eventuality, the resultant profile tends to be somewhat unrepresentative of the child in question, and the clinical utility of such a profile is thus partially vitiated.An alternat,ive technique, which may be considered as supplementing rather than supplanting Iscoe's profile technique, has been developed by the present authors and is presented in Figure 1. In this technique, the VSMS year scale is represented on the abscissa and the VSMS items are represented on the ordinate. Since there are unequal numbers of items within each year level, the actual number of points representing items within a given year interval vary, decreasing as the VSMS year scale increases. The total number of items receiving a plus score within each year, irrespective of the VSMS category in which it occurs, would be counted beginning from the first item occurring within a given year level. For example, if 16 of the 17 possible items within the Year 1 level were scored plus, the child would have his profile entry plotted a t item 16 of the Year 1 level. Successive entries would then continue to be made in the profile until no additional items were passed within a given year.