Marleen Wessels

Marleen Wessels is a researcher at the University of Groningen's Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, specializing in assessment and intervention for developmental and behavioural disorders. Her work focuses on individuals with severe intellectual and profound multiple disabilities, contributing significantly to the UN Sustainable Development Goals through inclusive research.

Her research expertise centers on psychometric validation of assessment tools for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. Key areas include content validity, construct validity, and motor development assessment, with particular emphasis on creating reliable measurement instruments for nonverbal populations. She employs methodologies like Delphi studies and cross-national inventories to evaluate assessment practices across European contexts.

Her publication trends reveal a consistent focus on improving assessment validity for profoundly disabled populations, with recent work examining communication intent, motor skills development, and behavioral appraisal systems. This research trajectory demonstrates increasing methodological sophistication from foundational inventory studies to advanced psychometric validation.

Wessels actively disseminates findings through academic presentations at specialized forums like the SIRG PIMD roundtables and professional workshops on assessment practices ("Meten is weten?"). Her work shows strong international relevance, with research conducted across multiple European countries and significant uptake in academic circles (26 Mendeley readers for key publications).

Her research group focuses on developing practical assessment frameworks for profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, emphasizing functional abilities and support needs rather than deficit-based approaches. Current projects appear centered on refining the Motor Development List and Behavioural Appraisal Scales for clinical implementation.