What can the AMPS give us that other evaluations do not?

The AMPS is the only standardized assessment designed to evaluate the quality of a person's ADL task performances. Evidence of increased effort, decreased efficiency, decreased safety, or decreased independence of individual goal-directed task actions (the ADL motor and ADL process skill items) that affect the overall effectiveness of ADL task performances is considered in the scoring of the AMPS. Because it is standardized, the OT practitioner can use it to objectively document the effectiveness of OT interventions.

The AMPS is a test of skill in occupational performance. It is important to not that the AMPS is not designed to be used to evaluate for the presence of neuromuscular, biomechanical, cognitive, or psychosocial impairments (e.g., strength, range of motion, memory), nor is it designed to be used to evaluate underlying capacities (e.g., ability to grip, ability to remember, ability to plan a course of action). Unlike impairments and underlying capacities, the ADL motor and ADL process skills of the AMPS are goal-directed actions enacted in the context of occupational performance. This means that the AMPS is used to assess activities and participation, not body function or contextual factors (WHO, 2001).

The results of the AMPS can be used to answer four questions

Why does this person experience difficulty? The answer is derived from the AMPS profile of that person’s ADL motor and ADL process raw scores; which skills/actions are effective and which are not.
What level of task challenge can this person manage? The answer to this question is derived from the ADL motor and ADL process ability measures; how much ADL ability this person has.
Is this person a candidate for restorative interventions based on the use of restorative occupation or compensatory interventions based on the use of adaptive occupation? The answer to this question is also derived from the person’s ADL motor and ADL process ability measures; persons with lower ADL ability may be less responsive to restorative occupation, but possibly able to benefit from adaptive occupation.
Has this person’s ADL performance improved as a result of our interventions? The answer to this question is also derived from the ADL motor and ADL process ability measures that provide an objective basis for measuring change. Changes in a person's ADL ability measures are used in research and quality assurance programs to provide us with an objective method to demonstrate to our clients, colleagues, health care administrators, and health care payers that occupational therapy services are cost-effective and improve the functional status of our clients. Even when effective interventions based on designing adaptive occupation are implemented, a person's ADL ability measures increase because environmental constraints are eliminated. Improved ADL ability can occur in the absence of any change in the status of a person’s neuromuscular, biomechanical, cognitive, or psychosocial impairments or his or her underlying capacity limitations.

The AMPS is unique in several ways, including the following:

The ADL tasks that the person performs for the assessment are chosen by the person, and are meaningful and relevant to his or her daily life and living situation. It is believed that ADL task performance is maximized when an individual has the opportunity to choose and enter into an activity that matches the individual's volitional traits.
The AMPS provides occupational therapists with a powerful and sensitive tool that can assist with treatment planning and documenting change.
The AMPS is an ideal assessment for managed care environments and other settings where occupational therapists need to demonstrate the efficacy of their interventions in a cost-effective and client-centered manner.
The assessment requires no special equipment and can be administered in any relevant setting within a 30 to 40 minute period.
The measurement model used to develop the AMPS allows a therapist to determine the ADL ability of the person, while taking into account the relative challenge of each of the ADL tasks the person performed. As a result, people who performed different ADL tasks can be directly compared.
The measurement model used to analyze the person’s scores also allows us to generate ADL ability measures that are adjusted to account for the severity of the rater who rated the person’s performance. As a result, a person's ability measures are not biased by the particular rater who observed the performance.
The AMPS has been designed so that it can be administered to children over the developmental age of 3 years, adolescents, adults, and older persons for whom there is concern about ADL task performance. The diagnosis of the person or the reason for the functional limitations does not matter.
The AMPS has been standardized internationally and cross-culturally on more than 100,000 subjects.

The AMPS has the following limitations:

Participation in a 5-day training and calibration workshop, with follow-up testing of 10 people after the course, is required to develop skill in the administration and interpretation of the AMPS, and to complete the rater calibration process.
The AMPS is not suitable for evaluation of children under the developmental age of 2 years, or persons who have no need or who are unwilling to participate in simple daily life tasks.
If the AMPS is to be used for documenting treatment efficacy, quality assurance, or research, it must be computer-scored. This is necessary to compute overall ADL motor ability and ADL process ability measures that have been adjusted to account for (a) the challenge of the tasks the person performed, and (b) the leniency of the rater who scored the person’s performance. The computer-scoring software is included with the AMPS training and calibration workshop materials.
The AMPS computer-scoring software is provided only to persons who participate in AMPS training and calibration workshops.

This page was last modified on 26 August 2010