Sensory Profile

Your Scientifically-Based Choice

The Sensory Profile family of products includes the best-selling Sensory Profile, Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile, Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, and the new Sensory Profile School Companion. The expansive age-range of Sensory Profile products allows you to confidently evaluate sensory-related difficulties in clients, from birth to geriatric. The Sensory Profile Supplement and Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistants are now available.

Whatever the age of your clients — infant, child, adolescent, or adult — Sensory Profile products can help you:

• Understand the complexities of their sensory processing
• Gather critical sensory information related to home, school, and work
• Design strategies for managing daily life

Build evidence in you practice

These unique instruments offer a research-based, family-centered approach to sensory processing and provide case studies and guide you in interpretation and intervention planning. For more information about how these assessments work together click here.

For further information about the administration, scoring, or interpretation, please click on the appropriate link below:

• Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile
• Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile
• Sensory Profile
• Sensory Profile School Companion
• Sensory Profile Supplement
• Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant

Meet a Child’s Sensory Processing Needs

With Sensory Profile™, you can determine how well children ages 3 to 10 years process sensory information in everyday situations. You can also profile the sensory system's effect on functional performance. The results of Sensory Profile, when considered with other evaluation data, will give you greater insight about the child for diagnostic and intervention planning.

Developed by Dr. Winnie Dunn, well known in the field of sensory integration, Sensory Profile will help you understand a child's sensory processing patterns.

Sensory Profile Supplement
Winnie Dunn, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA

The Sensory Profile Supplement offers the latest research available on sensory processing. This resource provides general information about sensory processing and problem solving strategies supported by clinical reasoning, along with expanded cut scores and quadrant cut scores. Use this supplement in conjunction with the current Sensory Profile to target effective intervention.

Structure
Items are grouped by sensory processing, modulation, and behavioral and emotional responses. The nine factor groupings characterize children by their responsiveness to sensory input including, Sensory seeking, Emotional reactive, Low endurance/tone, Oral sensory sensitivity, Inattention/distractibility, Poor registration, Sensory sensitivity, Sedentary, and Fine motor/perceptual.

Sample Study
The development of this evaluation tool was based on research on over 1,000 children, including children with disabilities, ADHD, and autism.

Link performance strengths and barriers with a child's sensory processing patterns

The profile contributes to a comprehensive picture of a child's performance. Combine it with other evaluation data to create a complete picture of the child's status for diagnostic and intervention planning.

Caregivers complete the 125-question profile, reporting the frequency with which their child responds to various sensory experiences. Once the questionnaire is completed, use the Summary Score Sheet to obtain a profile of the child's sensory responses. The Summary Score Sheet contains an area to record the child's demographic information, a Factor Grid to help summarize the child's scores into the nine factor groupings (i.e., Factor Summary), and a Section Summary to plot section raw score totals. The Short Sensory Profile is a 38-item caregiver questionnaire and score sheet designed for use in screening and research protocols. The items on the Sensory Profile are grouped into three major sections: sensory processing, modulation, and behavioral and emotional responses.

The Sensory Profile Caregiver Questionnaire, Summary Score Sheet, and Short Sensory Profile have been translated into Spanish. Each item was translated into Spanish, then retranslated back into English, by two independent consultants to ensure that the Spanish translation retained the original intent of the Sensory Profile. The classification system and cut scores were maintained for the Spanish version based on the assumption that children's sensory processing abilities are universal across cultures.

Use the profile's nine factor groupings to characterize children by their responsiveness to sensory input, sensory seeking, emotional reactive, low endurance/tone, oral sensory sensitivity, inattention/distractibility, poor registration, sensory sensitivity, sedentary, and fine motor/perceptual.

The manual presents information on administration, scoring, interpretation guidelines, development, and technical properties (reliability and validity).

Winnie Dunn is professor and chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy Education at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She is author of the Sensory Profile and the Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile and coauthor of the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile. Dr. Dunn is a Fellow of AOTA and a member of the American Occupational Therapy Foundation’s Academy of Research. She has earned the AOTA’s Award of Merit and has received AOTA’s Service Award several times. She has also received the A. Jean Ayres Research Award.

In 2001, Dr. Dunn was appointed the Eleanor Clarke Slagle lecturer, the top academic honor in occupational therapy. Her lecture, entitled The sensations of everyday life: Empirical, theoretical, and pragmatic considerations, included reflections on the meaning of her work on all the Sensory Profile measures. It is published in American Journal of Occupational Therapy, (November/December 2001, 55 (6)).

She earned a BS in Occupational Therapy and an MS in Education/Learning Disabilities at the University of Missouri at Columbia. She earned a doctorate in Special Studies: Applied Neuroscience at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. Additionally, Dr. Dunn has published extensively, authoring or coauthoring more than 100 journal articles, monographs, books, book chapters, and book reviews. She also has served on the editorial boards of Physical and Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics, Cognitive Rehabilitation, Occupational Therapy Journal of Research and Infants and Young Children. She has presented hundreds of papers and workshops during her career.

Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant

Software that meets your needs for all Sensory Profile products!

Sensory Profile Select Scoring Assistant supports the Sensory Profile (including expanded and quadrant cut scores), Infant/Toddler Sensory Profile , Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile and the new Sensory Profile School Companion.

• Save time with automatic scoring, interpreting, reporting and store your results.
• Administer the profile from a desktop computer.
• Receive a free annual subscription for any of the Sensory Profile products.
• Purchase software access to any of the Sensory Profile products or additional software subscriptions to other Sensory Profile products, based on your individual needs.

Desktop version for new software purchases.

If you already own Sensory Profile for Windows, you can purchase the enhanced software at a discounted price that includes quadrant and expanded scores for the Sensory Profile and receive a free annual subscription for the Sensory Profile.

To view a sample of the Short Sensory Profile Report Summary and Interpretive Report, and Caregiver Questionnaire Report, click here.
Full Sensory Profile Sample Report (PDF - 154 KB)

For your convenience, below is a list of commonly asked questions regarding the Sensory Profile.

1. When should I use the Sensory Profile?

Answer: You should use the Sensory Profile when you suspect that sensory processing issues may be impacting functional performance in everyday activities (e.g., self-care, school performance, play).

2. How will the Sensory Profile assist me in getting a child qualified for services in schools?

Answer: The Sensory Profile was designed to contribute to a comprehensive assessment of a child’s sensory performance when combined with other evaluations, observations, and reports to determine the child’s status for diagnostic and intervention planning.

3. How does it meet IDEA ’97 mandates?

Answer: IDEA mandates that children have the right to a free, appropriate public education provided in the least restrictive environment. When children begin to struggle to be successful in school and in related skill areas, a team of professionals collaborates with families to identify supports and barriers to successful performance. The law indicates that the team must explore the child’s needs in a comprehensive way, including finding alternative learning strategies, conducting formal assessments, and completing skilled observations, as well as interviewing and requesting information from parents, teachers, physicians and other service or care providers. The Sensory Profile evaluates a child in customary environments, focuses on family concerns, and links the effects of a child’s disability to the child’s participation in appropriate activities and general curriculum. The Sensory Profile provides evidence of validity for the specific purpose for which it is intended.

4. Is it appropriate to administer the Sensory Profile on a child with severe disabilities?

Answer: Yes, the profile is applicable for children with all types of disabilities and severity levels. However, if the child has not participated in a specific sensory experience, the caregiver will be unable to respond to all the items, and you will not be able to calculate scores for comparison to the sample of children without disabilities. You will gain clinical insights into the child’s sensory processing abilities and the child’s level of responsivity to sensory events. This information will enable you to more accurately interpret a child’s performance, and even non-performance, on the profile, so that you can design more effective intervention strategies based on your clinical expertise. Note that if you adapt the administration procedures, you may not use the classification system that is based on comparative results using standardized procedures. You may, however, use your clinical judgment to assist in your understanding of the individual’s sensory processing patterns and design intervention strategies that incorporate your understanding.

Technical Characteristics

Gain an understanding of the developmental aspects including sampling structure, validity, and reliability by reviewing the Technical Report.

Examining Sensory Quadrants in Autism (PDF - 141 KB)

Discover how a parent’s sensory ability can impact a child with Sensory Difficulties

Evaluate parents of a child or infant with sensory processing challenges with Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile.

By profiling the parents for their sensory processing responses, you will gain valuable insights into the child’s interactions and help to build more family-centered intervention strategies.

See the benefits of having a parent of a child with sensory processing difficulties take the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, by reading this real-world example, case study.

Sensory Profile Supplement
Winnie Dunn, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA

The Sensory Profile Supplement offers the latest research available on sensory processing. This resource provides general information about sensory processing and problem solving strategies supported by clinical reasoning, along with expanded cut scores and quadrant cut scores. Use this supplement in conjunction with the current Sensory Profile to target effective intervention.