Project Overview > How to Select a Tool

Consideration #5:
Adoption or Adaptation

Adoption or adaptation ? Depending on the situation, a workplace may want to either adopt or adapt a situational assessment tool from this catalogue. If adoption is preferred, it may be a matter of looking through the catalogue and selecting which tool has the best "fit" for a particular workplace (taking into account the purpose, audience, resources, etc.)

If adaptation of an existing tool is required, then a review of several tools may be necessary in order to identify the elements that could be integrated into a new tool. It should be noted that most of the tools in the catalogue do not allow adaptation (most have proprietary and copyright issues.) If a tool is adapted, it is important to acknowledge the original source. Also, similar to the issues of reliability and validity outlined above, because each tool in the catalogue has been reviewed as a whole, the virtues that made it "recommended" or "promising" may no longer be intact if the tool is disassembled.