The Rickter Scale
The Rickter Scale overview
Creator and Context
The Rickter Scale is a tactile, practitioner facilitated tool for structured self assessment and action planning.
It was created by Keith Stead and Rick Hutchinson in 1993, originally for young offenders and young people who were not in education, employment or training. It uses a hand held board with sliders that the person moves themselves along a 0 to 10 scale.
It is proprietary and licensed, and requires practitioner training.
Presenting Conditions
The Rickter Scale has no fixed domain set. Overlays are customised to the programme.
The commonly used generic frame of reference covers ten areas: education, training and employment; accommodation; money; relationships; influences; stress; alcohol; drugs; health; and happiness.
Administration
Facilitated by a trained practitioner using the physical board. The person moves the sliders themselves, which is the point of the design: it is multi sensory and the person controls it. The result is a self assessed action plan rather than a questionnaire score.
Desired Audience
Originally young offenders and young people not in education, employment or training. Now used more broadly across social, employability and wellbeing services.
For people who will not fill in a form, and there are many, a board with sliders they move themselves is a genuinely different proposition. Its strength is engagement with people who are disengaged from everything else.
Considerations
There are no published bands, cut offs or reference ranges.
No peer reviewed psychometric validation of the Rickter Scale could be located. There is no published reliability, validity or responsiveness study.
Independent review by Clinks and NPC concluded that Rickter Scale ratings are meaningful only for individual clients, are not consistent or reliable between people or over time, and that it is better used as a practical tool than as evidence of impact.
Because overlays are customisable, two organisations using it may share nothing but the board.
It is proprietary. Licensing and training are required.
How to score the The Rickter Scale
Conducting the assessment
The person moves a slider to a point between 0 and 10 for each heading on the board, facilitated by a trained practitioner.
Interpretation
Each heading is scored 0 to 10 by the person themselves. Progress is read as distance travelled between a baseline and later readings.
There is no total score, no published scoring algorithm and no norms. Interpretation is individual and comparative to the person's own earlier ratings.
Clinical Considerations
Use it as an engagement and action planning tool, which is what the independent evidence supports.
Do not aggregate Rickter data across people and present it as outcome evidence.
Pair it with a validated outcome measure where evidence of impact is required.
The Rickter Scale use cases
Engaging people who do not respond to conventional questionnaires
Structured self assessment and action planning
Recording distance travelled at an individual level
Category
General Well-being
Research Summary
Clinks and NPC. (2014). Improving Your Evidence: Using off the shelf tools to measure change. London: Clinks and New Philanthropy Capital.
Evaluation Support Scotland. The Rickter Scale [resource listing].
Note: no peer reviewed psychometric validation of the Rickter Scale was identified.
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