Adaptive Behavior Research Paper: Vineland Scale and Outcomes

This research paper delves into the realm of adaptive behavior assessment, with a specific focus on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale. The paper begins by defining adaptive behavior and highlighting its importance in daily life, particularly for individuals with developmental disabilities such as autism. It then provides a comprehensive overview of various adaptive behavior assessment instruments, discussing their advantages and disadvantages. The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale is analyzed in detail, examining its four domains: motor skills, cognitive competence, daily living skills, and social competence. The paper further explores the best applications of the Vineland Scale, including its use in diagnosing intellectual and developmental disabilities, planning interventions, and tracking progress. The outcomes of the assessment are evaluated, emphasizing the meaningfulness and reliability of the results, and the processes used to ensure validity. Finally, the paper concludes by acknowledging the strengths of the Vineland Scale while also suggesting areas for improvement, especially for assessing individuals beyond the age of 18.

Running head: ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR RESEARCH PAPER
Adaptive Behavior Research Paper
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The term adaptive behavior can be defined as the behavior that enables an individual to get
accustomed with his or her environment while ensuring greatest success as well as least conflict
with other individuals. Some of the major examples of adaptive behavior includes real life skills
like grooming , getting dressed avoiding danger, following school rules, safe food handling,
managing financial resources, maintaining cleanliness as well as the ability to effectively interest
with the peers. Issues with adaptive behavior are being faced by individuals of all age range. A
good number of behavioral interventions are being applied to treat children as well as adults who
are suffering from development disabilities like autism in order to develop a wide variety of
adaptive skills (Hodapp, 2011). In this report, an adaptive behavior assessment instrument, The
Vineland adaptive behavior scale, has been analyzed. The advantages and disadvantage of
adaptive behavior assessment instruments and how they are best applied has been assessed.
Along wit this, the outcomes of the assessment and their degree of meaningfulness has also been
discussed in this report.
1. What are the advantages/disadvantages of a variety of assessments?
The first adaptive behavior assessment instrument was first developed by Nihira,
Fosterm, Shellhaas and Leland in the year 1968 and has been named as the Adaptive
behavior checklist. Since then the mentioned scale has been revised a good number of times
and is currently knownas AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale. One of the most crucial
advantages of the scale includes it helps the physiologistsfor assessing the socialas well as
practical domains of adaptive functioning. Another advantage of the adaptive behavior scales
is that it allows the physiologists to measure the adaptive behavior of a wide range of people

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from birth to 89 years. When it comes to disadvantages, it can be said that the mentioned
instrument provides measurement that are not highly reliable in several cases.
When it comes to the Vinland Adaptive behavior scale a good number of advantages as
well as disadvantages can be pointed out. The four domain associated with adaptive behavior
includes the motor or physical competence, Cognitive Competence or Conceptual
Intelligence, Independent or Daily Living Skills or Practical Intelligence and Social
Competence or Intelligence (Price, Morris& Costello, 2018). The vine land adaptive behavior
assessment instrument corresponding the four domains for children and the last three
domains for adults. According to researchers, the mentioned measurement scale provides
highly reliable analysis that shows high level of internal consistency, test retest, split half as
well as interrelated reliability. A further advantages includes it can be administered with in a
limited time period of 20 to 30 minutes.
Considering the fact that the insruments are among the few that possess extensive norms,
comparison between peers of same age are possible. Thus otheradvantagesof the Vineland
adaptive behavior measurement scale are that it provides percentile ranks, stanins, and
adaptive levels, standard scores as well as age equivalents. While the standard score possess
mean of 100, the standard deviation is 15.
While the above mentioned factors are considered to be the chief advantages of the
mentioned instrument good number of disadvantages of the Vine and Adaptive behavior
scale can be pointed out. One of the chief disadvantages of this instrument is the receptive
subdomain of the communication domain only possess 13 items that are heavily weighted at
the basal end of the scale. Thus it can be clearly understood that the Vineland scale possess
low ceiling compared to alternative instruments like Peabody Picture Vocabulary test.

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Along with this, according to researchers, the Vineland adaptive behavior assessment
instrument also possesses some major psychometric deficiencies while being used with the
adults who possess physiological retardation (Sparrow, Cicchetti&Saulnier, 2016). This often
result in confusion associated with the validity of the derived scaled scores.
Another major disadvantage of the mentioned instrument is that, the Vineland lie majority of
the tests associated with adaptive behavior are completed with the help of an informant that
includes a relative. This often result in reduction of the validity since the individuals
associated with completing the instrument may tends to underestimate as well as
overestimate the level of competence of the patient.
The third disadvantage associated with Vineland Adaptive measurement instrument is the
issue associated with it issues associated with the applicability of the normative data.
According to the World Health organization, IQ of an individual should only be determined
rom the standardized intelligence tests with respect to the individual’s cultural norms (Yang,
Paynter& Gilmore, 2016). This is also applicable for the Adaptive behavior assessment.
However, the mentioned instrument does not consider cultural a norm a parameter to
measure an individual’s adaptive behavior.
2. How can they best be applied?
The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS) refers to a standardized assessment
instrument which is conducted through a semi structured interview do measuring the adaptive
behavior as well as for supporting the diagnosis of intellectual as well as development
ofdisability autism alongwith developmental delays. It may be used to determine the eligibility

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for services, plan rehabilitation as well as intervention programs along with tracking as well as
reporting progress (Kwok et al., 2017).
The chief purpose of the VABS is assessing the social aptitudes of a person whose age ranges
from 3 to 18 years. The assessment result generally reveals the crucial information that helps
psychiatrists to diagnose a good number of disabilities that includes mental retardation, speech
impairment as well as autism.
The adaptive behavior of an individual is comprised of a good number of dimensions and the
VADS instrument measures the same on the basis of 5 domains that include the daily living
skills. Communication skills, motor (both gross as well as fine) skills as well as al adaptive
behavior (Malkin et al., 2017). While the communication domain is found evaluating the
receptive, expressive as well as written communication skills of an individual, the daily living
skills domain is found to be measuring the personal behavior along with the domestic and
community interaction skills of the same. When it comes to the socialization domain, it is found
to be covering the paly and leisure time, international relations as well as varies coming skills.
Finally, the motor skills domain are found to be measuring both the fine and the gross as well as
the fine motor skills.
According to researchers, the first four domains are considered to be the chief part of the
VABS Behavioral scale (Jordan et al., 2019). The last domain that is the maladaptive behavior is
considered to be optional part of the evaluation. The mentioned tool is used for measuring
obvious behaviors that are undesirable. For children younger than the age of 6 years, a different
version of the VABS is found to be used.

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The VABS tool is administered with the help of a semi structure interview. Considering the
requirement of flexibility for assessment tolls, the updated form of the VABS tools comes in
three chief editions that include Survey forms, the Expanded form as well as the Classroom
edition that is known as Vineland 3 (Salekin, Neal& Hedge, 2018).The Survey form of VABS
possess 297 items that are distributed over the four domains. This form is generally answered by
the parents or primary care giver of the child. The expanded form is mostly useful to the teachers
as well as psychologists ho are planning for IEP for a special child. It is consists of 280 questions
added to the 297 questions and thus a total of 577 question. This form is comprised of 244 items
that are designed to evaluate the adaptive behavior of children as well as adolescents within the
classroom.
3. Are the outcomes that identified and measured meaningful?
The outcomes obtained from the Vineland Adaptive Behavioral Scale are measured on the
basis of the scores obtained by the patient after answering the questionnaires in the form. The
adaptive behavior composite scores are considered to be the most useful score that is considered
by the healthcare service users for making decision of whether or not the adaptive functioning of
the examinee is consistent with the Full scale IQ (Farmer et al., 2020). The subdomain raw
scores are interpreted keeping accordance with the tabled vales as high, moderate, moderately
low as and low. Considering the fact that the mentioned adaptive behavior assessment is
recognized for is high reliability in majority of the cases, the outcomes that are identified as well
as measured are found to be meaningful. In order to evaluate the meaningfulness or reliability of
the VABS, the following four methods are used.

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1. Internal consistency: A split half reliability test is found to be considered as the
reliability of the scores with the help of using the standardization data. The spearman
brown formula is used for determining the domain as well as subdomain.
2. Inter interviewer reliability: For determining if the scores remain consistent and does not
changed drastically depending on the interviewer, the respondents are interviewed on
separate occasions by different interviewers. This process ensures the reliability of the
data.
When it comes to ensuring the validity of the outcomes obtained, three chief processes are
chiefly followed. The first process includes test content. Considering the fact that the tool is
designed for measuring the 4 chief aspects associated with adaptive functioning that includes
communication, socialization, daily living skills as well as motor skills, each of the domain and
their subdomains possess target behaviors that are considered important for adaptive functioning
(Singh, Pandey&Agarwal, 2019). The second way of measuring the validity of the outcome
includes evaluating the measurement bias with the help of using differential item functioning
along with evaluating the measurement bias at the item as well as the scale levels with the help
of using differential item functioning.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be clearly understood that the Vineland Adaptive Behavior
scale is an efficient instrument for measuring the adaptive behavior of children, adolescents as
well as young adults. However, when it comes to assessing the adaptive behavior of individuals
above the age range of 18 years, the instruments is found to be lacking the ability. The high
reliability of the mentioned tool being one of its major strength it can be said that several factors

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of the same needs to be considered and modified so that the efficiency of the mentioned tool can
be enhanced to a great extent.

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Reference List
Farmer, C., Adedipe, D., Bal, V. H., Chlebowski, C., &Thurm, A. (2020). Concordance of the
Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, second and third editions. Journal of Intellectual
Disability Research, 64(1), 18-26.
Hodapp, R. M. (2011). International review of research in developmental disabilities.Academic
Press.
Jordan, A. K., Thomeer, M. L., Lopata, C., Donnelly, J. P., Rodgers, J. D., & McDonald, C. A.
(2019). Informant Discrepancies in the Assessment of Adaptive Behavior of Children
with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 49(5),
2024-2034.
Kwok, A., Arnold, L. E., Barterian, J. A., Pan, X., Scahill, L., Aman, M., &McDougle, C.
(2017). Evaluating the Relationship Between the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale and
the Assessment of Basic Language and Learning Skills-Modified.
Malkin, A., Dixon, M. R., Speelman, R. C., & Luke, N. (2017).Evaluating the relationships
between the PEAK relational training system–direct training module, assessment of basic
language and learning skills–revised, and the Vineland adaptive behavior scales–
II. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 29(2), 341-351.
Price, J. A., Morris, Z. A., & Costello, S. (2018). The application of adaptive behaviour models:
a systematic review. Behavioral Sciences, 8(1), 11.

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Salekin, K. L., Neal, T., & Hedge, K. A. (2018). Validity, interrater reliability, and measures of
adaptive behavior: Concerns regarding the probative versus prejudicial
value. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 24(1), 24.
Singh, S., Pandey, S., &Agarwal, V. (2019).A Comparative study of Vineland Adaptive
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Sparrow, S. S., Cicchetti, D. V., &Saulnier, C. A. (2016). Vineland adaptive behavior scales,
(Vineland-3). Antonio: Psychological Corporation.
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