Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting (DASH 17+) - Reviews

I have been using this test for a few months now, as part of assessments of University students who are having difficulties and who may or may not be dyslexic. Previously I had no satisfactory way of measuring writing speed, so DASH is certainly an improvement.

The distinction between "copy fast" and "copy best" is useful.

I have not yet found any benefit to measuring handwriting in bursts of 2 minutes ("free writing") or 1 minute ("copy writing"), though I can see that in theory this might give useful extra information.

The optional "graphic speed" sub-test is useful, especially as I don't know of any other test like it, i.e. which measures pencil skill without requiring actual writing.

Confidence intervals at 68% are the only ones given. I prefer to quote the 90th or 95th percentile, and should be grateful for some feedback as to what these are. I suspect they may prove to be so wide as to reduce the usefulness of the test overall.

WE SAY: in response to the query in the last paragraph, this information is detailed on page 81 of the manual.

What an eye opener this assessment was!

I did a 'run-through' on my 17 yr old granddaughter, in order to get familiar with the product. She scored so highly that she was off the chart! Therefore I couldn't give her a score. Maybe the assessment could be improved in order to score the more able students, and this will in turn remind us how hard our struggling pupils are having to work in their day to day handwriting tasks.

I work with 'special needs' children and I had forgotten what "normal" (Sorry - not very PC!) looked like!

I found the assessment results very illuminating, because I also trialed it on another very highly achieving pupil and was astonished to discover that his handwriting was very laboured, inaccurate and slow. He easily fell into the "Needs more time in exams" bracket! This discovery has changed the way that we teach him. I would have missed his very genuine need for extra help, and time in exams, had I not tried out the DASH 17+ on him.

A surprisingly brilliant assessment tool!

We are all very grateful.