AAIDD trains professionals to:
- Understand the unique, supports-oriented intent of the SIS
- Exhibit essential skills in interacting with respondents
- Clearly understand the intent and rating system for each item measured by SIS.
Reliability is a word you will see used often in AAIDD SIS training programs. Reliability means consistency—that is, results obtained by the one person trained to administer the instrument would be consistent with the results obtained
by the actual developers of the tool, and respecting the tool's intent in measuring the support needs of an adult or child.
Once an interviewer's inter-rater reliability is established, they will obtain comparable results (plus or minus an acceptable error rate) with any other trained interviewer who administers the tool. In projects where multiple interviewers conduct assessments
with a large number of people, the inter-rater reliability is crucial to gain an accurate understanding of the population assessed.