Occupational Therapy Assessments (2024) • OT Potential

Choosing the right occupational therapy assessment sets the stage for evidence-based OT practice.

But, finding the right combination of assessments can take a little digging, as there are more OT assessment tools out there than you may realize. Many are disease- or condition-specific, and many approach the assessment process from different angles (top-down, bottom-up, questionnaire style, etc.). Therapists should also consider if a self-report measure might be a helpful way to establish your client as a partner in care.

Luckily, many of these assessments are FREE. 🙂

We are so passionate about helping OTs find the right assessment to kick-start their care. In this post, you’ll learn about our OT Assessment Search, and get to see a long list of the assessments found in it!

Occupational Therapy Assessment Search in the OT Potential Club

At OT Potential, we want to make it easy for you to deliver the best care possible. And, so we’ve gathered a list of standardized assessments that we found in influential OT-related research studies.

You will find these assessments listed below. Some of them will be familiar, but I suspect you’ll also discover some new ones you’ll be eager to integrate into your practice.

For members of the OT Potential Club, we took things one step further, compiling everything into a comprehensive OT Assessment Search. You’ll be able to quickly find the perfect assessment to kick off your treatments.

For each assessment, you’ll be able to quickly see:

Primary patient population
What it assesses
How much it costs
How long it takes to administer
If you need special training beyond your OT degree

Try our OT Assessment Search Tool FREE for 5 days!
Quickly search over 260 OT assessments.

Try the OT Assessment Search

Our ultimate list of occupational therapy assessments!

These assessments were either found in the in the research we’ve reviewed in the OT Potential Club, or were suggested by Club members!

Pediatric assessments and other common practice area-specific options

In our guides to specific OT practice areas, we list common assessments in each setting. These guides are another great starting point for your search to find the right assessment.

Assessments for OTs using telehealth

In light of COVID-19 and the shift toward offering virtual services, we have also gathered information on OT assessments for telehealth care delivery.

Conclusion

Choosing the right assessment sets you up to provide great care—but finding the right one for your needs can be a challenge. At OT Potential, we seek to collect the scattered and hard-to-decipher information on various assessments and make it simple for you to find what you need in just a few clicks.

Please comment below with features you would like to see in The OT Potential Club Assessment Search, as well as your favorite assessments you think we should add to our list.

To get instant access to this growing database of OT-specific assessments, join the OT Potential Club!

Join the OT Potential Club

Or try the OT Assessment Search Tool today!

11 replies on “Occupational Therapy Assessments (2024)”

Lacls and Ocairs please

Oh yeah! I’ve used both of these! I will add them to my list! Thank you so much!!

De Paul Questionnaire for ME/CFS and Log Covid https://csh.depaul.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/ccr/myalgic-encephalomyelitis-cfs/Documents/DEPAUL%20SYMPTOM%20QUESTIONNAIRE%20with%20SF-36%20and%20MFI%20and%20SI%205-18-11.pdf

QEESI – https://tiltresearch.org/qeesi-2/
NASA lean test for orthostatic intolerance: https://batemanhornecenter.org/assess-orthostatic-intolerance/#:~:text=Ask%20the%20patient%20to%20remove,vital%20readings%20are%20relatively%20consistent.

2 day CPET test for fatigue disabilities eg long covid, ME/CFS, MS etc https://workwellfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CPET-Methodology-for-Assessing-Exertion-Intolerance-in-MECFS-2018.pdf

Would love to see cited reliably/validity measures, as available for each assessment.

Additionally, it would be great to be able to plug in some key words (such as "dementia", "home safety") in order to quickly identify assessments relating to the search criteria.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

Love this feedback, Kori! Thank you!

The search component you mentioned is definitely possible and something we are building.

My plan right now reliability/validity measures is to provide links to pages that contain that information, but not to host it within the search itself…. I’m trying to balance keeping the information easy to read, but having avenues to dive really deep into the assessment.

Oh! And, one more thought on this! I do plan to provide an easy visual, like a star, if the assessment is used in the influential research we review each week in the OT Potential Club. I figure this should serve as an initial indicator of validity/reliability, as one would hope that researchers are only choosing assessments with established validity/reliability.

Hello, I read that you were building a new search component for the assessments, a key word search specifically. Has this been implemented yet?? Thank you

Hi Laura!! Yes! The search is live and we are adding to it every week! The upcoming feature I’m most excited about is that we are categorizing the assessment as top-down vs. bottom-up. Are you a member of the OT Potential Club? The Search has been such a big project, we decided to offer it to our members within the Club. You can learn more here about signing up: https://otpotential.com/

What a great resource! Have you considered including the Occupational Performance Inventory of Sexuality and Intimacy (OPISI)? It can be downloaded for free from opisi.uindy.edu

TVPS -4 is now outdated. Do you have access/info on the most up to date version #5?

Thank you, Mary!! We are planning a big update to this post in July and will be sure to make sure the TVPS gets updated!