APPA – Assessing Wellbeing in a Digital Age

APPA (“Adaptive Processing Psychological Assessment”) is a powerful tool specially designed to assess child and youth wellbeing using digital technology that taps into the minds of young people.

As parents and teachers know, a young people will not always confide when they are troubled. So, to prevent young people falling into a vacuum where they cannot access help or even talk about their issues, APPA Scotland has come up with a novel and creative solution, “APPA”.

Augmenting the incredible work of guidance teachers and parents, APPA will provide the young person with a clear picture of their strengths and weaknesses enabling a more focused approach to building wellbeing either through self help or counselling.

Why APPA?

Children and Youth Centred – First and foremost, APPA puts young people at the heart of the solution by removing any adult involvement in the assessment process. In short, it provides a more accurate and objective assessment and feedback that young people are more likely to engage with since it is self-generated. APPA provides insights into the key issues of young peoples’ strengths, the risks they face in their environment and the mechanisms available to them mitigating for these risks.

Teachers – Making APPA available to students means a huge amount of information about pupil wellbeing can be generated outside classroom time. Teachers will receive a set of unbiased wellbeing reports that will help them identify which pupils are doing well and those who would benefit from extra support. APPA

Since APPA can be used to reassess students periodically, educators using APPA have a tool to verify if interventions are actually improving the young person’s wellbeing.

Mental Health Professionals – Never has homework been more fun for young clients. Even better, mental health professionals receive summaries of young persons’ resilience detailing their performance on the 8 different Wellbeing Indicators detailed below—mental health professionals can also receive their clients’ responses to each question, given the young person provides their consent.

Parents and Caregivers – After a child has used APPA, Parents and Caregivers are given access to the child’s Resilience Report describes how well the young person performs providing the young person has accepted that the parent is a trusted adult.

APPA Scotland, working with Dr Julienne McGeough of Liverpool Hope University have taken the simple 8 indicator SHANARRI report, criticised by the high court of Scotland, as being too general and have refined and augmented it into the SHANARRI40™ report. This report is based on the 8 wellbeing indicators of:

• Safe
• Healthy
• Achieving
• Nurtured
• Active
• Responsible
• Respected
• Included
• Learn more

With the help of Dr McGeough, APPA Scotland has developed this crude quantitative measure into a something very different. Focused on 40 sub-constructs of the 8 indicators, by using APPA, teachers will have insight into the following facets of the young people they are working with: