Reliable self-repotting by persons with mental retardation can be enhanced with the addition of picture-cued questioning. The Sheltered Care Environmental Scale (Moos & Lemke, 1979) was chosen as a basis to construct a picture-prompted questionnaire assessing three dimensions of the social environment of residential settings, Conflict, Cohesion, and Independence. A test-retest (6 wk. between testing) design was used to compare picrure-prompted administrations in conrrast to those relying exclusively on verbal questioning. Ten adult residents (M IQ = 52.3; M = 54.8 yr. of age; 6 men, 4 women) of a large Midwestern residential treatment facility voluntarily participated in this study. All clients were verbal, had no sensory impairments, and were ambulatoq. Three subscales were chosen to compare the reliability of verbal and picture-cued environmental repow of the subjects, Conflict, Cohesion, and Independence. Simple Line drawings corresponding to the content of each question were created for simultaneous display with each inquiry during the picture assisted interview. Two pictures were designed for each question representing the contrasting (either/or) views of each question. This pilot study showed that picture-cued questions can increase the temporal reliability of self-report questionnaires when administered to adults with moderate mental retardation. The Pearson correlations obtain4 from the test-retest using the picture-cues format were: Conflict .53, Cohesion .59, Independence .51. The Peanon correlations obtained from the test-retest using only the verbally administered format (no picture cues), the same method as Lewy, Donald, and Karan (1984) who also examined moderately menrally retarded adults, were slightly lower-Conflict .46, Cohesion .30, Independence .43-&an those with the pimre-cued method. This study indicates that the addition of picture cues to currently available assessments may be an economical method of increasing the reliability of residential evaluations obtained from persons who are moderately mentally retarded. A larger study is in process examining these findings. REFERENCES LEWY, A. L., DOLAND, T. R., & KARAN, 0. C. (1984) A baseline assessmen! of the physical and social environment of Alverno. Madison, WI: Waisman Center on