Help identify each student’s personal preferences
Studies1 have shown that when educators incorporate autistic students’ personal interests and preferences into classroom materials, they can improve task engagement and student focus. This data sheet is designed to help you identify each student’s personal preferences.
- Begin the session by placing five items on the table and record the first item selected by the student. Allow access to the item for about 30 seconds.
- Remove the first item selected by the student and put it aside. Mix the four remaining items up and ask the student to select a second one.
- Repeat until all items have been selected, or until the student stops making selections.
- Repeat the full process (with all five items) four times.
How to score
Assign a number to each item based on the order chosen by the student. Do this for each of the trials. After four trials, the item with the highest number of 1s is the highest preferred. Another way to score is to add up the numbers assigned to each item across all four trials – the lowest score is the most preferred.
Download the Preference Assessment below and try it out with this video!
References:
[1] Boyd BA, Conroy MA, Mancil GR, Nakao T, Alter PJ. Effects of circumscribed interests on the social behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorders. J Autism Dev Disord. 2007 Sep;37(8):1550-61. doi: 10.1007/s10803-006-0286-8. Epub 2006 Dec 5. PMID: 17146704.