The psychometric properties of the Behaviour Assessment Record (the BAR schedule)

Two hundred and forty-seven completed Behaviour Assessment Records (BAR) for people with learning difficulties living in hospital, community residential facilities or the family home were subjected to item analysis and factor analysis. The instrument as a whole proved to be highly internally consistent, although the corrected item-total correlation coefficients suggest the redundancy of some items on individual sub-scales. Factor analysis produced a two-factor solution accounting for 32.9 and 10.8% of the variance. These factors were named Personal self-care and Use of public amenities. Summative scales based upon these factors were highly internally consistent. Comparisons are made between the internal consistency and factor structure of the BAR and those of similar measures of adaptive behaviour, such as the Social Training Achievement Record (Sturmey et al., 1988), the Pathways to Independence Checklist (Walsh & McConkey, 1989), and the Adaptive Behavior Scale (Nihira, 1969a, b, 1976).