PASSING Sample Reports

The below are a number of historical evaluation reports from both PASS and PASSING that have been made available by services and evaluators to others wishing to learn to write assessment reports.

PASS[1] and PASSING[2] are tools for evaluating the quality of any kind of human service to people with any kind of condition.  Both instruments were designed not only to assess service quality, but also to teach:  PASS, the earlier instrument, to teach normalization concepts; PASSING, the successor of PASS, to teach Social Role Valorization.  It was hoped that a service’s score on a PASS or PASSING assessment could help determine whether it ought to be funded, or funded more lavishly:  the higher a service’s score, the better it would be for the people served, and therefore the more cost-beneficial it would be to fund it.

Both PASS and PASSING are applied by a team of approximately five to ten people led by a team leader.  The team spends time in in-depth interviewing of service providers, and observing the service in operation.  After this collection of evidence, the team engages in a lengthy discussion called “conciliation” to achieve consensus on the service’s performance on each of the ratings that make up the tools.  PASS has 50 ratings, PASSING has 42 ratings.

PASS was designed and used widely during the deinstitutionalization era of the late 1960s to mid-1970s, and once Dr. Wolfensberger shifted from normalization to Social Role Valorization, PASSING was designed and widely used.  Both instruments have been used to conduct thousands of evaluations of services of all kinds (residential, day programs, institutional and non-institutional, etc.) to all kinds of people (children, the aged, mentally handicapped, physically handicapped, the poor, prisoners, etc.) in the US, Canada, England, Australia, France, and Spain.

Typically, a written report was produced of the evaluation, detailing the service’s strengths and weaknesses, the major issues the team identified in the service, and recommendations for making the service more consistent with normalization or Social Role Valorization, and therefore of higher quality and of more benefit to the people served.  The assessed service could decide whether to keep the report confidential, or to release it for wider availability, especially to those who were learning normalization/Social Role Valorization and to assess services with PASS or PASSING.  Not surprisingly, most services that received a critical rather than laudatory report did not release them.

However, some such reports were released and are available.  They give more detail about the rating instrument PASS or PASSING itself, about the process of the assessment, and they show how service practices would be judged in light of normalization or Social Role Valorization.

[1] Wolfensberger, W., & Glenn, L.  (1973; 1975).  PASS (Program Analysis of Service Systems): A method for the quantitative evaluation of human services.  Vol. 1. Handbook.  Vol. 2.  Field Manual.  (2nd & 3rd eds.).  Toronto, ON:  National Institute on Mental Retardation.

[2] Wolfensberger, W., & Thomas, S.  (1983).  PASSING (Program Analysis of Service Systems’ Implementation of Normalization Goals):  Normalization criteria and ratings manual (2nd ed.).  Toronto, ON:  National Institute on Mental Retardation.

Wolfensberger, W., & Thomas, S.  (2007).  PASSING:  A tool for analyzing service quality according to Social Role Valorization criteria.  Ratings manual (3rd rev. ed.).  Syracuse, NY:  Training Institute for Human Service Planning, Leadership & Change Agentry (Syracuse University).


Wolf Wolfensberger - In honor of a Man & His Life's Work
SRV Journal - A helpful addition to the International SRV Training Culture