Clinical perspective on the Swedish version of the Assessment of Communication and Interaction Skills: stability of assessments.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether ratings according to the Assessment of Communication and Interaction Skills, Swedish version (ACIS-S) are related to the settings in which the skills are assessed, and whether the client's comprehension of the setting is related to the ACIS-S rating scores. The ACIS-S is an observation rating scale applied immediately after each of two to six different social sessions that the client takes part in. The selection of settings relies on the client's judgement of them as being meaningful. In total, nine occupational therapists and 16 clients participated in the study. A total of 71 ratings were made in a mean of 4.4 settings per client. The results indicate that the client's rated comprehension of the settings is not significantly related, in general, to the ACIS-S rating scores given by the occupational therapist. However, the clients ACIS-S scores may vary a lot over settings. In the present study, 13- of the 20-items showed ratings of both the existence and the absence of problems in the same skill -- but in different settings -- in half or more of the client group. This may rise questions for the practitioners how to implement the ACIS-S in clinical practice, for example, how many and which kind of settings and how many times? Further research in the field is recommended.