writing

[nika751]

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I am a current doctoral student in a school psychology program. I am doing very well in my program, have a great working relationship with my dissertation chair, and am doing lots of extra research. However, I also have multiple learning disabilities. I have learned to compensate for most of this over time. There is one area though where my compensatory strategies are maxing out short of where I need them to- writing. I can type a paper well. I can express myself using written text. I cannot hand-write legibly or fast enough to keep up with what is being said. This is becoming more and more of an issue. Does anyone know any strategies to help wit this? Thanks!

 

[researchgirl]

Sounds like you have done a great job compensating so far. Awesome! I guess this really depends on your situation, but a few possilibities:
-Meet with disability services at your University to see what services or accomodations could be available to you.
-Buy a digital voice recorder, and forego taking notes for recording them and then typing up relevant info later.
-Always have a laptop to take notes on, to avoid having to hand write (only works if you can type fast enough to take the notes).
-Ask another person who attends meetings/classes/etc. with you if you can photocopy their notes.

 

[nika751]

Those are great ideas! Any thoughts on clinical or testing situations where hand-writing is expected or part of the standardization? Thanks!

 

[PsychPhDone]

Particularly if you register with the disability office, you should be able to type practically everything.

 

[MCParent]

Particularly if you register with the disability office, you should be able to type practically everything.

Typing responses during a WAIS administration (for example) would be nonstandard though. I would think you could shorthand the answers for scoring purposes, audiorecord the session, and type it in later.

 

[researchgirl]

Hmm - do you mean when you are providing clinical services or conducting assessments? For therapy (I'm in clinical, FWIW), I think you can learn to basically not take notes during sessions, especially if you can type out a few comments to yourself afterwards. Other than intake sessions, I probably write at most 10 words down during a typical 50 minute session. Intakes would be harder, but perhaps your clients would agree to be voice recorded... certainly in a training setting we often tape for supervision, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch.

For testing/assessment situations in which part of writing is the administration... that depends on the test and could be trickier. It would be depend on the severity of your impariment. For many assessments that I know (e.g. WAIS/WISC), you only need to circle answers or write down 1-10 words, which perhaps you could manage. For tests that require a lot of writing (e.g. the TAT), other than voice recording and then typing transcripts later, I'm stumped.

 

[futureapppsy2]

For testing/assessment situations in which part of writing is the administration... that depends on the test and could be trickier. It would be depend on the severity of your impariment. For many assessments that I know (e.g. WAIS/WISC), you only need to circle answers or write down 1-10 words, which perhaps you could manage. For tests that require a lot of writing (e.g. the TAT), other than voice recording and then typing transcripts later, I'm stumped.

In my experience with the WISC/WAIS, the answers on some subtests can be much longer than 10 words (e.g., several sentences), although this was with examinees with average or above average intelligence.

OP, I don't have any answers for you but I wish you luck. It's very hard to accommodate any administrator disability on the WISC/WAIS because of the strict standardization (and yet the items are somehow read and not recorded, which is odd... but that's off topic). If you find a solution, please. let us know

 

[PsychPhDone]

Typing responses during a WAIS administration (for example) would be nonstandard though. I would think you could shorthand the answers for scoring purposes, audiorecord the session, and type it in later.

There hasn't been research (to my knowledge) of what typing during administration of these tests could do to results, but OP -- contact me if you want to know what workarounds I have seen.

 

[MCParent]

There hasn't been research (to my knowledge) of what typing during administration of these tests could do to results, but OP -- contact me if you want to know what workarounds I have seen.

There's no research on what reading the questions as Donald Duck would do either. Both are nonstandard administrations.

 

[PsychPhDone]

There's no research on what reading the questions as Donald Duck would do either. Both are nonstandard administrations.

🙂 I don't disagree! I'd just be curious to see the results if someone would randomize clients to having their assessor take notes traditionally vs. type them on a tablet, for example. I'd love to see a day when electronic recording becomes standard.