This presentation shows how research projects can produce valuable assessment tools for the local, national and international community. The first project on children’s early word learning demonstrates how our research led to the production of the UK-Communicative Development Inventories with UK-standardised questionnaires and the first UK norms of early language. As no such norms existed, we have filled this gap and health and education professionals, speech and language therapists and researchers can now use appropriate UK questionnaires and norms to enable early assessment of child’s language development. The second project on Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) led to the creation of unified best practice guidelines and the Lincoln Education Assistance with Dogs (LEAD) Risk Assessment Tools. These are the first comprehensive and easy-to-use risk assessment tools of their kind and can be used to ensure safe and animal welfare-oriented AAI locally, nationally and internationally. They provide consistency across AAI providers, AAI users, researchers and settings and protect the safety and welfare of all involved.
Prof. Kerstin Meints, Dr Janine Just, Dr. Mirena Dimolareva, Dr Victoria Brelsford, Dr. Elise Rowan, All School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, UK
Collaborators at other Universities: Prof Caroline Rowland, Anna Christopher (School of Psychology, Liverpool, UK), Dr.Katie ALcock (School of Psychology, Lancaster, UK), Prof. Nancy Gee (VCU, USA)