Download a copy of The Practice Academy’s Sensory Processing Checklist here
A sensory processing assessment should help us understand a person's lived experience. It should be completed with the person or someone who knows them very well. Completing the questions as part of a conversation means that you can capture all the nuances of a person’s different responses to situations. So please don’t email it out to a person and treat it is something to be filled out in a spare moment.
Assessing a person’s sensory preferences can help a clinician notice patterns that might otherwise be missed. Used well, it creates a structured conversation about a person’s lived experiences of the world; what they enjoy; what they avoid and what helps them participate in different situations. Used poorly, it becomes another form completed about someone and filed away.
Sensory experiences are subjective and if you are working with a non-word communicator or person who is not able to articulate their experiences this should be noted on the checklist. It will be important when interpreting the answers, a support person may observe that a person leaves the dining room sometimes and they may assume that it is because it is noisy. But only the person can tell us whether the room feels painfully loud, the food smell is overwhelming, the social demand is too much, or they simply want to be somewhere else.
For this reason, a sensory checklist should be completed with the client wherever possible. It should not simply be emailed to a parent, teacher or support worker with a request to fill it in. Supporter observations can be valuable, but they are one source of information rather than the person's voice. If a person is not able to participate it might be helpful to compare a couple of different supports viewpoints to get a more complete picture.
What a sensory processing assessment can tell you
The Practice Academy’s Sensory Checklist provides prompts across sensory systems such as sound, vision, touch, taste and smell, movement, body awareness and interoception. It can help identify situations that deserve closer observation and reveal whether responses change with context, predictability, control, fatigue, pain or cumulative sensory load.
A completed checklist may suggest that a person seeks a particular type of sensory input or avoids and can become distressed by it, or responds differently at different times. It is important to note that these are observations, not diagnoses. The checklist does not prove that a behaviour is sensory driven, determine the function of behaviour or replace a standardised assessment by a suitably qualified professional.
This caution is supported by research as systematic reviews have found substantial variation in what sensory questionnaires measure and limitations in the psychometric evidence for many available assessment tools. A checklist is therefore best used to develop questions and hypotheses, not to produce a score that is treated as a clinical conclusion or diagnosis.
Download a copy of The Practice Academy’s Sensory Processing Checklist here
Before completing the checklist
Start by explaining the purpose in a way the person can understand. The aim is to learn what environments and activities feel like for them and what might make participation easier. Seek their agreement and adapt the process to their communication preferences.
Choose a time and place where the person is comfortable. A long interview in a noisy office is a particularly unhelpful way to investigate sensory comfort. The checklist can be completed over more than one session and may work better alongside familiar activities, photographs, objects, visual choices, demonstrations or visits to relevant settings.
Clarify who should contribute. This might include family, support workers, teachers, clinicians or others who know the person in different contexts. Their role is to add observations and examples, and they should know the person well.
How to complete the sensory checklist collaboratively
Move through the checklist as a guided discussion rather than reading every item as a rapid-fire question. Ask about real situations, for example what is the supermarket like on a Saturday? What happens when the hand dryer starts? How does your body feel before you need to leave? What helps? What makes it worse?
A person's contribution may include speech, using a AAC device, signing, gestures, facial expression, body movement, behaviour, choosing between visual options or physically showing you what they do. Allow processing time and breaks. Be aware if a person indicates they want to skip an item or stop the discussion.
Record the person's own words wherever possible. Separate self-report from observation. For example: 'Sam selected too loud and pointed to the exit' is more informative than 'Sam has auditory sensitivity.' Specific descriptions reduce the risk that interpretation is mistaken for fact.
Explore variability. A person might enjoy loud music that they choose but find an unexpected vacuum cleaner intolerable. They may seek movement at home but avoid it when tired or unwell. Marking 'mixed or depends' is not a poor result, it is often the beginning of useful discussion. Try to stay curious.
For each possible pattern, ask what impact it has on daily life. Does it affect eating, personal care, learning, relationships, sleep, work or community access. Don’t forget to identify strengths, preferences and sensory experiences the person enjoys. The checklist shouldn’t be a list of issues, it should reflect a person preferences, activities that are enjoyable as well as challenging.
Do not interpret the checklist in isolation
Sensory processing is one part of a broader biopsychosocial picture. Pain, illness, trauma, anxiety, communication barriers, sleep, medication, task difficulty, social interactions and lack of choice can all influence behaviour. The same outward behaviour may occur for different reasons, and more than one factor may be operating at the same time.
Compare the checklist results with observations across settings, health information and behavioural data. Look at occasions when the behaviour occurs and when it does not. For example, if a person leaves some noisy spaces but remains in others, examine the type of noise, predictability, control, preferred activities, relationships, duration and opportunities to take a break.
Turning observations into practical support
Once patterns have been discussed, agree on a small number of safe and realistic changes to try. These might include reducing unnecessary noise, offering choice about lighting or seating, making breaks easy to request, preparing the person before predictable sensory events, or ensuring a preferred regulation option is available.
Strategies should be selected with the person rather than imposed on them. They should support autonomy, comfort and participation not simply make the person appear more compliant or less visibly different.
Document what will be tried, where, who is responsible and how the person will indicate whether it is helpful. Monitor intended and unintended effects. If the strategy does not improve the person's experience or participation, revisit the hypothesis rather than assuming the person failed to engage.
When to involve another clinician
Behaviour support practitioners can gather observations about sensory events within their scope of practice and competence and include sensory variables as part of their broader behaviour assessment. This is not the same as completing a comprehensive diagnostic sensory assessment.
Seek input from a clinician qualified in completed sensory assessments when sensory differences are significantly impacting on everyday activities or safety, or if specialised recommendations are being considered. A health review may also be required where there is pain, a sudden behaviour change, dizziness, falls, eating or swallowing concerns, hearing or vision changes, pica, seizures or other clinical red flags.
The aim is collaborative practice, not professional turf warfare. Each practitioner contributes within their knowledge and scope so that the person receives coherent understanding and practical support.
The most useful result is a better question
A sensory checklist is valuable when it helps the person and their team become more curious and more precise. It should lead to questions such as: What does this experience feel like? When is it manageable? What control does the person have? What are they communicating? What change would make participation easier?
Completed collaboratively, the checklist can strengthen sensory processing assessment, inform a behaviour support plan and identify when further observation or specialist input is needed. Completed remotely as a tick-and-return form, it risks producing labels without context.
The goal is not to finish every box. The goal is to understand the person well enough to make their environments and supports more responsive.