The scale for emotional development-revised (SED-R) for persons with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems: development, description, and reliability

Objectives: The Scheme for Appraisal of Emotional Development (SAED, Dos. en, 1997) is intended to evaluate the emotional development of persons with intellectual disabilities (ID), especially those with co-occurring problem behaviour. In 2012, The Scheme for Appraisal of Emotional Development-revised (SED-R) was developed in Dutch, based on the SAED. This paper aims at providing a description of the SED-R, its development, and results from an inter-rater reliability study. Methods: The study was carried out in services that support persons with ID in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. For each client, the SED-R was administered twice with the same informants by two different trained interviewers at different points in time, with a 1-week minimum and 3-week maximum between assessments 1 and 2. Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was calculated in order to estimate the internal consistency. The degree of agreement between the scores of the assessment pairs at time 1 and time 2 (which could be regarded as test-retest reliability) was expressed in Spearman's rho. For the extent of inter-rater agreement, the intraclass correlations coefficient (ICC) was applied. Results: The reliability results indicate that the SED-R generally shows a high internal consistency. The total and average score of the SED-R show a substantial inter-rater reliability. Ten out of 13 domains show moderate to substantial inter-rater reliability. Conclusion: The results are discussed in relation to four notions: robustness, utility, understanding, and relevance. It is necessary to generate more knowledge with regard to the validity, reliability and applicability of the SED-R, warranting further research.