This Much!

This Much! offers a customisable interactive visual analogue scale designed to help quantitative and qualitative assessment of children and also adults with a disability or mental health problems.

The aim is to support self report in such a way as to promote assessment and therapy, as well as empirical research. It is designed to help answer questions about circumstances and people which elicit a range of feelings. This Much! can be used to generate numerical data which can be subjected to quantitative analysis, but equally, it can be used to negotiate therapeutic goals with a child or adult with a disability using graphic visual representations.

For many children and some adults, "How Much?" can be a very difficult question to answer, and is also one which often elicits responses that are very difficult to quantify. Fortunately, for most purposes this is not a major problem, and feelings & preferences can be discussed or negotiated informally, even light heartedly.

However, in some situations relative strength of feelings, or changes in subjective experiences over time can be of enormous importance. For example, when helping a sick child communicate the severity of pain he or she is experiencing, professionals are playing a crucial role in both ensuring adequate analgesia, but also in monitoring recovery. Whether the pain today is less or more than it was yesterday, is of critical importance.

Many other facets of childrens lives and experience, such as fears and other emotions about relationships, school, loss, may also be very important to assess with some accuracy. Similarly, adults with an intellectual disability, autistic spectrum disorder or other mental health problems may also struggle to communicate their preferences, feelings or wishes - and as a consequence may suffer poorly informed decisions made on their behalf.