Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS)

About Rater Training

In the process of developing the AMPS, it has become apparent that valid and reliable administration and interpretation requires that interested occupational therapists (a) participate in a training course, and (b) become calibrated as a reliable rater. The 5-day training workshops provide critical information related to the theoretical basis of the AMPS as well as experiential learning of administering and scoring AMPS evaluations.

Within a 5-day AMPS training course, participants also obtain valuable, hands-on information regarding occupation-based assessment and intervention. In fact, after taking a AMPS training course, participants have often commented that they have finally found their niche, their unique occupation-based role, within the rehabilitation team. With the new skills and insights they developed during the course, their confidence is enhanced, and they are more capable and proactive advocates for occupational therapy and the use of occupation as both a means and an end when providing occupational therapy services.

Finally, rater calibration requires that potential raters view and score videotaped AMPS observations during the course and then complete 10 live observations after the course. Rater calibration allows us to determine each rater's severity and whether or not he or she is scoring the AMPS in a reliable manner. Please read more about Rater Calibration.

Midwestern University students at the AMPS course
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, July 2011

This page was last modified on 10 January 2012