What cut off points should I use when deciding whether to recommend additional time or a scribe in examinations to support children with slow handwriting?
The DASH provides a measure of handwriting speed which can be useful when attempting to determine eligibility for extra support for a child (e.g. Access Arrangements). In educational and clinical settings, scores of 1 or 2 standard deviations below the mean are commonly used as critical points for decision making. These points are easily determined from the DASH standard scores. A detailed examination of the profile of DASH scores and the percentage of illegible words on the Free Writing task might be helpful when making a decision about what type of support to recommend for a child with slow handwriting. However, the DASH scores alone should not be used to make specific recommendations to recommend extra time versus a scribe. To make such decisions, additional information will first need to be sought to inform what type of support would be of most benefit to the child.
