While we always recommend assessing as many items as possible for the EYE-TA, we acknowledge that this is not always possible for every child. Our best advice is to assess as many items as you can and let the EYE application determine if there is enough data to produce a meaningful score for a particular domain. Below is an outline of how these scores are calculated and why this is important.
Each domain score is simply an average of the all of the individual item scores for that domain. If an item score is missing, provided that it is correctly marked as Exempt during data entry, that item will simply be removed from the calculation. This means, for example, that we would divide the sum of the item scores for Domain A by seven instead of eight for a child who missed an item in that domain. A problem only really arises when multiple items are missing in a single domain. The fewer scores we obtain for each domain, the less confidence we have that we are accurately capturing a child's abilities in that domain. This can sometimes result in domain scores that conflict with your understanding of a child's abilities in the class (higher or lower than expected). If too many scores are missing for a domain, the reliability of the score becomes so low that the EYE application won't be able to return a valid domain score and will list the domain as ‘Not Complete’.
The situation is very similar when it comes to the RTI score calculation. We are able to successfully impute data if a child is missing a single domain score. However, if they are missing more than one, there is not enough data to produce a reliable RTI score*.
The bottom line is, the more items you can assess, the more confident you can be in the results. In circumstances where you aren't able to assess every item, capture as much as you can and the app will calculate the results for you.
*The Gross Motor subdomain is not factored into the RTI calculation and thus it is possible to receive an RTI score while missing this domain as well as another one. All other domains/subdomains are included in the RTI calculation.