Applied social psychology · Psychometric consulting
Five original instruments, every item written here, all grounded in the same research on how people read each other. Most evaluation tells you what happened. These tell you why, early enough to act.
Belonging, situational barriers, and family support sit in the higher-risk band. Those are the intervention targets. Overall engagement and relevance read well, which is exactly why a satisfaction survey would have missed this.
Leadership vision and strategic alignment are strong, so the appetite is real. Data governance and staff digital literacy are not, so the capacity is not. Adoption efforts that skip the second pair tend to stall six months in.
Learners value the institution and know why they enrolled. What they lack is connection to peers and faculty, and confidence navigating the institution. Those are structural problems, not motivation problems.
How we work
These are alternatives, not stages. Pick based on what you already have in house.
For organizations and funders
Inconsistent data usually means inconsistent definitions. We fix those first, build a collection system that enforces them, then add instruments to a foundation that can carry them.
For program evaluation firms
You keep the client and the deliverable. We supply the instrument layer your team does not staff for, and the scope can be written into your proposal before the award.
For firms with in-house analysis capacity
Technical manual, scoring syntax, and interpretation guide, so your own analysts can run it. Opens once validation and population norms are established.
Administrative data records attendance, completion, and outcomes after the fact. It cannot tell you why one person persisted and another left, and it cannot flag anyone before they are gone.
An instrument administered at intake produces a leading indicator. Subscale profiles show where risk actually sits, which is rarely where staff assume, so support goes to the specific driver instead of spreading evenly across everyone.
OAIRS, PPRRS-WA, LCEP, and PACCI are covered by a validation protocol determined exempt by an accredited independent institutional review board in August 2026. Data collection is authorized and has not begun. SBIIS is under institutional review.
Nothing is called validated before it is, and every report states the instrument’s status plainly. Deployments before validation closes run under early access terms, where the partner receives full subscale reporting and contributes to the validation record.
Why this is rare
Writing an instrument for a specific setting produces sharper measurement than borrowing one built for another. Ours are designed around the people and organizations that use them.
Also from Sims Praxis
Bring the population, the decision the data has to support, and the timeline. If an instrument is not the right answer, we will say so.
Email Dr. SimsFederal and state contracting
Sims Praxis, LLC is registered in SAM.gov and available for federal contracts, federal grants, and subcontracting to prime evaluators.
UEI PAV8YK8CQSV4
CAGE 23W15
Primary NAICS 541720 · Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities