A Fitness Assessment System for Individuals with Severe Mental Retardation

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of fitness assessment for use with individuals who are severely mentally retarded. An overview of The Ohio State University’s Project Transition is accompanied by a detailed review of its assessment system with a particular emphasis upon scoring. Some notable features of the system are contrasted with those of the three related published assessment systems in physical education. The most significant characteristic of the Project Transition assessment system is its score sheet, which yields specific information related to percentage of task completion, level of prompting required for subtasks, whole skill performance, task-analyzed step descriptions, and reinforcement strategy. Assessment systems for individuals who are severely handicapped rarely provide all of these measures. An assessment system of this type is claimed to be useful for both the practitioner and the researcher.