The Visual Skills Appraisal (VSA-2) provides an easy way to screen for common visual skill difficulties that can impact academic performance and participation, including reading and writing tasks by way of five items that assess binocular, ocular-motility, and visual-motor skills. The VSA-2 requires minimal equipment and can be administered as part of a school’s annual vision screening program or with students who present with visual skill concerns to determine need for further optometric evaluation.
The VSA-2 is an easy-to-use standardized screener of visual efficiency and visual-motor skills for ages 5 through 14. These skills are typically not assessed during standard school vision tests but are critical for academic achievement and participation.
The VSA-2 can be administered in just 10–15 minutes and scored in 5 minutes, making it ideal
to use as part of a whole-school vision screening program or with individual children who may
have challenges with visual skills. The VSA-2 is intended to be used by occupational therapists,
psychologists, and other professionals trained in assessing visual-motor skills.
VSA-2 Items
- Pursuits (Object Tracking) – Assess the child’s ability to smoothly track vertically, horizontally, and in a circle.
- Scanning (Trails) – Assess the child’s ability to accurately and efficiently visually follow intersecting lines between two points.
- Aligning (Push-Ups) – Assess the child’s near point of convergence and screen for strabismus and phorias.
- Locating/Saccadic Eye Movements (Numbers) – Assess the child’s ability to accurately and efficiently move the eyes between two visual targets.
- Eye-Hand Coordination (Design Completion) – Assess the child’s ability to accurately complete six unfinished forms when presented with a visual model to copy.
Standardization Sample
The normative sample included 1,000 children and adolescents, and it closely represented the U.S. population in major demographic characteristics (within 5%). The normative sample included children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, developmental coordination disorder, specific learning disability/dyslexia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, sensory processing disorder, and visual efficiency disorder (binocular vision or ocular motor disorder).
Administration and Scoring
The VSA-2 can be administered in 10-15 minutes and scored in 5. Detailed examples are provided in the manual to assist with scoring the Design Completion items. Raw scores are converted to an Overall standard score and percentile rank. Individual items and time scores can be further analyzed using frequency tables.
Reliability and Validity
- Average Cronbach’s Alpha value across all ages was 0.72.
- Test-retest correlation was 0.80.
- Interrater reliability correlation was 0.91.
- Validity studies demonstrated that the VSA-2 is able to identify visual skills challenges in children with specific learning disability, dyslexia, and autism spectrum disorder, and is able to differentiate typically developing children from those with a known visual efficiency disorder.
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