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Disability Assessment: 4 Tips to Effectively Reduce Customer Test Anxiety
Many
workforce development agencies provide some sort of assessment to measure their
customer’s reading and math skills. In most cases, this is done to determine
the need for basic skills assistance or to qualify the customer for other
services. Many of you have probably already witnessed that using the word
“test” often raises the anxiety level of a person just by its mentioning.
Anxiety in and of itself is caused by anticipating something stressful. For
your customers, that anticipation may be due to the fear of not being found
eligible for services, potential embarrassment because of reading or math
scores, or just feeling vulnerable to what may or may not happen as a result of
taking the assessment.
1. First,
don’t call it a test.
For your purposes, and that of most workforce development agencies, you are
doing an assessment or screening of your customer’s skills and abilities. Make
sure you present it in that way to your customers. Even by definition, an
assessment or appraisal sounds a lot less threatening than a test or critical
evaluation of one’s skills.
2. Clearly
explain the reason why you’re giving the assessment.
Spell it out in simple terms, but more importantly, let your customers know that
the purpose of the assessment is to qualify them for services NOT to screen them
out. The more relaxed you are, the more relaxed you will make your customers
feel about it. If they clearly understand their scores may help vs. hinder
them, taking the assessment will seem much less scary.
3. If
your customer was referred by another agency, always check to see if similar
assessments were given somewhere else. There is no reason to re-administer
an assessment if current results from an acceptable tool already exist. Our
customer’s often have to fill out enough paperwork with repeat questions
depending on how many agencies they are receiving services from. Your efforts
to locate duplicate assessments will be well received and will help in
establishing rapport with your customer.
4. Know
how to provide testing accommodations
to customers with disabilities if they are requested. A word of caution…make
sure if you make any alterations to the assessment yourself, you don’t
invalidate the results. For example, if you have a customer that is unable to
read the assessment due to a visual impairment, it may be okay to read the math
portion of the assessment to him or her, but certainly not okay to read the
reading portion out loud.
You
should be able to find helpful testing accommodation suggestions for most
assessments on the publisher’s website. If after searching the publisher’s
website for accommodation information you are unable to locate it, most will
have an 800 number you can call with questions. For accommodation information
on the CASAS or the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System, which is
commonly used by One-Stop agencies, you can
visit:
http://snipurl.com/2tpyh
or call (800) 255-1036.
Would you like to reprint this article?
You may as long as you include this blurb in its entirety:
Lisa
Jordan
is a disability and workforce development expert. Lisa uses her keen ability to
identify challenges and develop solutions so
that workforce development professionals can increase their comfort level,
productivity and effectiveness when working with a diverse clientele. Download
Lisa’s White Paper on 5 Easy Disability Tips to Immediately Increase Agency
Accessibility by visiting
http://www.human-solutions.net.
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