Abstract:
The Bilingual Home Inventory is a culturally specific instrument for assessing students with severe handicaps. Because it provides information about the student's home and community environment as well as his learning style, it can be used to develop linguistically and culturally appropriate Individual Education Plans. The test can be used for students in grades K-12 and centers on a home survey in which the "home environment" is broken down into sub-environments that correspond to the rooms of the house. Each sub-environment is further broken down into the activities that take place there. These activities are reduced to skills and behavioral units via task analysis. Taking into account the student's current level of functioning and the requirements of his environment, instructional goals can then be set. Information is gathered from family members, so the test administrator must be fluent in Spanish. Cultural guidelines concerning proper etiquette for visiting a Spanish-speaking home are included in the test materials. No assessments of reliability or validity have been done.