Writing psychological and educational reports for culturally and linguistically diverse client.

A psychological and educational report (often termed a psycho-educational report) is an organized,

comprehensive, and integrated written account of the results obtained from a
psychological/educational assessment.
Traditionally, the criteria followed are to write such a report plainly and succinctly, describing personal
student history, the results of quantitative measures, clinical deductions, and specific
recommendations. There are several purposes for a psychological report; for the school psychologist,
the primary reasons are to explain the results of the assessment, to provide recommendations for
interventions, and to stress the need for special services when applicable. This report is written in a
different manner depending on the purpose of its use.

Psychological reports serve several functions. The first function is to increase the understanding of
clients, their parents (in case of children), and other professionals (including teachers) about clients’
strengths and adaptive skills; cognitive, academic, and social-emotional difficulties; and the
environmental factors that impede and enhance learning and social-emotional adjustment. The second
function is to provide
viable recommendations for accommodations and interventions that are tailored to the needs of the
client. The third function is to communicate the diagnostic information and recommendations in ways
that they are understood, appreciated, and implemented with the ultimate result of improvements in
clients’ functioning. The final function of psychological reports is to provide a long-term record that can
be used to access treatment and accommodations

Reports that consider readers’ skills typically have short sentences, minimize the number of difficult
words, reduce jargon, have very few acronyms, and have several subheadings.
While writing reports for culturally and linguistically diverse clients, Rogers et.al. (1999) suggested that
school psychologists should be well versed with local and state laws, immigration and naturalization
laws, civil rights related to educational services, and bilingual and ESL program legislation.

National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) (2000), culturally diverse populations Practice
Guideline 5 highlights the following:

School psychologists have the sensitivity, knowledge, and skills to work with individuals and groups with
a diverse range of strengths and needs from a variety of racial, cultural, ethnic, experiential, and
linguistic backgrounds. School psychologists incorporate their understanding of the influence of culture,
background, and individual learning characteristics when designing and implementing interventions to
achieve learning and behavioral outcomes.

In the same Manual, Section IV: Professional Practices—General Principles; D: Reporting Data and
Conference Results, point 3, p. 28, states the guideline for writing psychological reports as -School
psychologists prepare written reports in such form and style that the recipient of the report will be able
to assist the child or other clients.

Reports should emphasize recommendations and interpretations; unedited computer-generated

reports, pre-printed -check-off‖ or -fill-in-the-blank‖ reports, and reports that present only test scores or
global statements regarding eligibility for special education without specific recommendations for
intervention are seldom useful. Reports should include an appraisal of the degree of confidence that
could be assigned to the information. It is suggested that before signing the reports, school
psychologists must review their reports for accuracy.
Apart from giving these guidelines, NASP‘s standards recommend the following five areas of sound
psychological assessment that should be adhered to, so as to ensure that ethical and legal concerns
have been respected -
Multifaceted—it should ensure the use of multiple methods of assessment to avoid a single test score
being used as the sole basis for decision making

Comprehensive—assessments should cover all areas of the child‘s difficulties (e.g., health, vision,
hearing, social/emotional functioning, intellectual abilities, educational achievement, communication
skills, and motor abilities);

Fair—while selecting assessment instruments and procedures, the assessor must take into
consideration age, gender, native language, socioeconomic status, disabilities, and cultural and ethnic
background.
Especially in the case of a child with a disability, appropriate assessment procedures must be selected in
order to ensure that cognitive ability, educational achievement, and adaptive behavior are fairly
evaluated.
Students with limited English proficiency (LEP) must be tested for language proficiency so that
appropriate instruments can be selected to test them and proper interpretation can be made keeping
their limitations in mind.

Valid—the validity of the test utilized should be assured by following the Standards for Educational and
Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999). A summary of the standards indicates that school
psychologists are ethically responsible for evaluating the technical standards (validity, reliability,
standardization norms) of the tests they use, so as to guarantee that they are valid for their intended
purposes.

Practice Implications of Writing Psycho-Educational Reports for CLD Students

There are many ways of conducting assessments of CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) students.
While writing a psycho-educational report for CLD students, the assessor has to incorporate students‘
cultural, racial, and experiential background, the dominant language and the second language acquired,
acculturation stages, educational qualifications, community, and home background, etc. This
information is vital for the report because assessment and report writing are interconnected. If this
background information is not collected and reported in the report, it will be just a traditional report.

Prior to discussing the objectives of a culturally focused psycho-educational report, the format of a
traditional psychological report should be examined.

Sattler (2001) describes the typical sections of a report as follows:

1. Identifying Information
2. Assessment Instruments
3. Reason for Referral
4. Background Information
5. Observations During the Assessment
6. Assessment Results and Clinical Impressions
7. Recommendations
8. Summary
9. Signature

However, Sattler (2001) highlighted that a psychoeducational report has many objectives and for writing
a fair ethical report, these objectives must be
kept in mind. Some of these objectives are -
1. It is important to give the referral source and other relevant authorities the full information about
the background in terms of developmental, medical, intellectual, social, cultural, and educational history
background, language, and environmental or political influencers.
While reporting cultural background, the assessor should include information about the racial or biracial
identity, religious or traditional beliefs, socioeconomic status, health practices, immigration status,
acculturation stage of the student as well as the parents, and also the disciplinary norms practiced at
the home of the students. The assessor should be able to differentiate a language disorder from second
language acquisition developmental stages.

2. The report should cover CLD students‘ interpersonal skills, intellectual and cognitive abilities, motor
skills, and personality, as assessed at present.

3. The report should have enough information about the burden on the social, emotional, and
intellectual development of the CLD child who needs to adjust to the second culture and learn a second
language. The
level of their language proficiency in a second language should be mentioned in the report.

4. All assessment results should be reported in a culturally sensitive manner.

5. The report should be written in such a manner that it can be used to form clinical hypotheses, and
relevant intervention programs, and can be a base for evaluation and further research. For
academicians, it
should serve as a guide to CLD students‘ academic strengths and weaknesses.

6. One should report the quantitative tools and qualitative techniques, if any, used to measure
language dominance or bilingualism, especially for students who are not very proficient in their native
language.

7. If any modification was done to the standardized tool or any other kind of adjustments/deviations
were used, that also should be reported. If the scores obtained by CLD students were interpreted
against the norms that were not standardized on the CLD student population, then results should be
described in a qualitative manner too.

8. Pertinent comparison group should be used to interpret the assessment of CLD students.

9. While reporting on the cognitive abilities of the CLD student, the assessor must give an estimate of
the intellectual functioning of the child after making sure that biases in testing have been removed or
adjusted for. If intelligence has been assessed by using alternative methods or qualitative methods it
should be reported accordingly, for example, if intelligence is measured in terms of musical, bodily
kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal abilities, etc. The qualitative methods used to assess
intelligence in the nonconventional method can include performance-based assessment,
functional assessment, dynamic assessment, and/or developmental assessment.

10. The report should also include the results of the learning ecology
assessment. This assessment can be done by following steps -
(a) review of educational records;
(b) observation of the student during class instruction, as well as an examination of the content of the
instruction;
(c) suitability of the curriculum;
(d) evaluation of the fit between the student and the curriculum with consideration of the student‘s
needs;
(e) deductions made from parent and teacher interviews; and
(f) review of medical records (Ortiz, 2002).

11. The clinical impression given in the report should actually reflect the true personality and behavior
of the CLD child as per his culture and ethnicity.

12. The report should include the results of the ecological assessment of the CLD child, indicating the
child‘s functioning within his own family and community.

13. If the assessor has used an interpreter, then the details of the interpreter‘s training and credentials
as well as limitation must be mentioned.

14. If a translated version of any test is used, then it should be highlighted that the psychometric
properties of the original non-translated test and the psychometric properties of the translated version
of that test are not the same.

Cross-Cultural Competencies Relevant to Report Writing

Multicultural assessment includes many areas of competencies such as -

(a) clinical interviewing and assessment of individuals from diverse backgrounds;
(b) maintaining culturally centered ethics in testing;
(c) expertise in cultural identity and acculturation;
(d) appropriate selection of assessment instruments; and
(e) knowledge of diagnosing individuals from diverse cultures.

Correspondingly, knowledge and skills for selecting culturally appropriate interventions and
recommendations are also part of cross-cultural practice (Suzuki et al., 2001), and report writing should
adhere to the same competencies recommended for cross- cultural assessment practice because
the two are directly related. However, since the field is lacking in specific cross-cultural competencies
for report writing, the best way to distinguish the competencies that are relevant to report writing is to
review the specific domain of culturally competent practice in assessment advocated by the National
Association of School Psychologists (NASP), and observe how it might be connected to psychological
report writing.

Standard III. Psychoeducational Assessment:

1. Knowledge of and skills in assessing CLD students, including consideration of variables such as
environment, social issues, language development, second language acquisition, acculturation,
educational history, quality of educational program, SES and racism.

2. Understanding that normed tests may not be a valid measure for English Language Learners (ELLs)
due to inappropriateness of norms, scores reflecting English proficiency, product as opposed to process
orientation, fairness of content, and differences in educational background, acculturation, and
economic situation; need to be familiar with second language acquisition stages; cultural variables that
influence the results of an assessment; use of translators.

writing is goal directed and requires the writer to engage in planning, sentence generation, and revision.
Planning is influenced by the task environment; in the case of report writing, supervisors should strive to
ensure that students have the knowledge they need about the diagnostic issues and recommendations
and about the reader’s skill in reading reports. Instructors should provide motivating cues to ensure that
students exert the extraordinary amount of effort that is sometimes needed to produce an effective
report at the initial stages of their learning. Planning is also influenced by writers’ long-term memory; in
the case of report writing, this involves background knowledge in the areas implicit in the referral
questions, their understanding of the knowledge and literacy levels of their readers, and stored writing
plans ing).
While writing they need to monitor their work to ensure that they are communicating their goals (which
are informed by the goals of parents, children and adolescents, and teachers), reporting accurate data,
and writing at a level of their readers. This involves reading and reviewing the text produced and asking
their supervisors to review and provide feedback on the draft.