Assessment and diagnosis of social hardship situations through the SISO tool: demonstration of stability in measurement

Abstract

Assessment and diagnosis form part of the methodological process of intervention in social work and of the services provided by the public social services system. In this context, instruments are needed to assess situations of social exclusion. This article reviews the leading measurement tools and examines the stability of the SiSo tool for the assessment and diagnosis of inclusion and exclusion in terms of social position. The adequacy of the areas that make up this measurement instrument and the ordinality of the proposed items are analysed based on the data from first-level the professional assessments of the first level of the Castilla-La Mancha public social services system. Statistical analyses were conducted with a total of 44,196 assessments of cohabitation units recorded using the tool from 2018 to 2023. The results achieve a high degree of validity and reliability, endorsed by the similarity of results obtained for the different years. These are significant findings insofar as professional decision-making in social inclusion policies requires valid and reliable diagnostic tools.