The improvement of the quality of life (QOL) of children with disabilities has been considered important. Therefore, the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool (SNEAT) was developed based on the concept of QOL to objectively evaluate the educational outcome of children with disabilities. SNEAT consists of 11 items in three domains: physical functioning, mental health, and social functioning. This study aimed to verify the reliability and construct validity of SNEAT using 93 children collected from the classes on independent activities of daily living for children with disabilities in Okinawa Prefecture between October and November 2014. Survey data were collected in a longitudinal prospective cohort study. The reliability of SNEAT was verified via the internal consistency method and the test-pretest method; both the coefficient of Cronbach's α and the intra-class correlation coefficient were over 0.7. The validity of SNEAT was also verified via one-way repeated-measures ANOVA and the latent growth curve model. The scores of all the items and domains and the total scores obtained from one-way repeated-measures ANOVA were the same as the predicted scores. SNEAT is valid based on its goodness-of-fit values obtained using the latent growth curve model, where the values of comparative fit index (0.983) and root mean square error of approximation (0.062) were within the goodness-of-fit range. These results indicate that SNEAT has high reliability and construct validity and may contribute to improve QOL of children with disabilities in the classes on independent activities of daily living for children with disabilities. IntroductionChildren with chronic conditions often go through long-term treatment, which may be complex and may negatively impact their well-being. For children undergoing long-term treatment, as for all other children, school education is considered important for their growth and development (Kohara et al. 2012). In planning treatment and interventions for children with chronic conditions it is important to measure quality of life and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) (Taylor et al. 2008). In this context, the necessity of evaluating the educational outcome of children taking special needs education, based on their QOL, has been on the rise. Kohara et al. (2014b) verified the effectiveness of using HRQOL to evaluate educational outcome for the purpose of improving the QOL of children with disabilities, and to address the need for a tool for evaluating educational outcome according to the QOL of children with disabilities. The study results that they obtained confirmed that the classes on independent activities of daily living for children with disabilities are related with HRQOL. Based on those results, the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool (SNEAT) was developed by including therein the common components of the classes on independent activities of daily living for children with disabilities and HRQOL (Han et al. 2014). The classes on independent activities of daily living for children with...

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It is currently difficult to find the tools to assess educational outcome in the field of special needs education. Therefore, this study aimed to develop the tool to evaluate the educational outcome of special needs education, called as the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool(hereafter, the SNEAT), that will enable teachers to evaluate their classes according to the changes of children with disabilities; for the development of the SNEAT, its content validity was verified with the draft of the SNEAT. For the content validity verification of the SNEAT, the surveys via interview and questionnaire were conducted for the researchers for special needs education, teachers who are affiliated with educational research institutes run by Prefectural governments and in-service teachers. In results, over 90 percent of the respondents answered that it is valid, which showed that the content validity was verified. The scientific methods to verify the SNEAT in the field of Education, however, need to be explored in the future, because the content validity verification method is done based on the subjective opinions of respondents. Ⅰ. BackgroundEven though the evaluation of academic ability has been considered as the major way to evaluate the educational outcome, the difficulty lies to apply it in the setting of special support schools; thus, whether the goals of the class on independent activities have been achieved or not has been used as an indicator to evaluate the educational outcomes in the setting of special needs schools (Kohara & Han, 2014). The new Courses of Study pointed out that "for the evaluation of the class on independent activities, the validity of plans as well as the effects and evaluation of education should be sufficiently reviewed, because the goals and contents of guidance are individually set up"; both the learning of students and the practices of teachers during the class need to be evaluated. Suzuki (1995) emphasized the importance of evaluation by suggesting that the evaluation of students should be used to reflect the classes, to understand the changes of students and to determine the appropriacy of classes.Nevertheless, it is difficult to find the tools that are built based on those aforementioned considerations and, moreover, it is hard to find the tools that have been scientifically verified and structured assessment tools. Nozaki, Kawasumi (2012) found that over 60 percent of in-service teachers have difficulty in the learning and practice evaluations by conducting the survey for school teachers on the learning evaluation and practice evaluation of special needs education, which presented the necessity of the development of education assessment tools for special support education. In this context, this study aimed to develop the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool(hereafter, the SNEAT) to enable to evaluate lesson evaluation according to the changes of students. This is a meaningful attempt, for it has not been tried in Japan by now. Shimizu (2005) suggested that the tools should...

The psychology, physiology and pathology of children with health impairment have not been sufficiently understood in the field of education. However, there is no tool to measure the psychological, physiological and pathological changes of children with health impairment until now and the current state of the classes to consider the psychology, physiology and pathology of children with health impairment has not been investigated. This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the psychological, physiological and pathological changes of children with health impairment and the outcome of the classes by using the PATCHI and SNEAT. The class evaluations were carried out for one 5th-grade student with health impairment by using both PATCHI and SNEAT once a week between January and March in 2015. In results of data collection, the psychological, physiological and pathological changes of children with health impairment and the outcomes of classes at schools were measured and the tasks to be improved in the curriculum of universities for teacher education for special needs education were investigated. ＜Key-words＞The psychology, physiology and pathology of children with health impairment, Assessment, SNEAT, PATCHI colora420@gmail.com (Aiko KOHARA) Asian J Human Services, 2015, 9:107-117.