The following are benefits of using the AMPS:

• The ADL tasks that the person performs for the assessment are chosen by the person as ones that are meaningful, relevant, presenting a challenge, and the desired focus of occupational therapy services.

• The AMPS provides occupational therapists with a powerful and sensitive tool that can assist with planning treatment and documenting change.

• The AMPS is an ideal assessment for managed care environments and other settings where occupational therapists need to demonstrate the efficacy of their interventions in a cost-effective and client-centered manner.

• The assessment requires no special equipment and can be administered in any relevant setting within a 30 to 40 minute period (less than 1 hour, including scoring).

• The many-facet Rasch measurement model used to develop the AMPS allows the occupational therapist to determine the ADL ability of the person, while taking into account the relative challenge of each of the ADL tasks the person performed. As a result, people who performed different ADL tasks can be directly compared.

• The many-facet Rasch measurement model is used to analyze the person’s raw item scores in order to generate linear ADL ability measures that are adjusted to account for the severity of the rater who rated the person’s performance. As a result, a person’s ability measures are not biased by the particular rater who observed the performance.

• The AMPS has been designed so that it can be administered to children over the developmental age of 2 years, adolescents, adults, and older persons for whom there is concern about ADL task performance. The diagnosis of the person or the reason for his/her functional limitations does not matter.

• The AMPS has been standardized internationally and cross-culturally on more than 140,000 persons.

The AMPS has the following limitations:

• Participation in a 5-day training and calibration course, with follow-up testing of 10 people after the course, is required to develop skill in the administration and interpretation of the AMPS, and to complete the rater calibration process.

• The AMPS is not suitable for evaluation of children under the developmental age of 2 years, or persons who have no need or who are unwilling to participate in simple daily life tasks.

• If the AMPS is to be used for documenting treatment efficacy, quality assurance, or research, it must be computer-scored in order to compute overall ADL motor ability and ADL process ability measures that have been adjusted to account for (a) the challenge of the tasks the person performed, and (b) the leniency of the rater who scored the person’s performance. The AMPS software is provided to each occupational therapist who attends an AMPS training and calibration course.  Successful completion of rater calibration  is required before the occupational therapist is able to use the software to generate reports that include the person’s ADL motor and ADL process ability measures.