Methodology for clinical readers
How Stridesy is built
Stridesy is a parent education, home practice, and progress tracking tool for families of autistic children. It is grounded in established developmental skill frameworks and behavior analytic teaching principles, but it is not ABA therapy, a clinical assessment, diagnosis, treatment, or a replacement for services delivered by qualified professionals.
Assessment framework
The intake asks structured questions about a child's current skills, communication, daily routines, behavior, safety, motivators, and home context. The system maps those answers to developmental skill signals.
- VB-MAPP is the primary framework for early language, listener responding, social behavior, play, motor imitation, and visual performance skills.
- ABLLS-R is used as a supplemental framework for adaptive, motor, and early academic areas where a broader developmental lens is useful.
- Each intake response stores structured domain signals that are aggregated into estimated skill levels and confidence ranges.
- The intake is used to personalize home practice inside the app. It is not a diagnosis, formal evaluation, or clinical assessment.
Goal generation
After intake, Stridesy generates Stridesies, which are skill goals for home practice. Goals are not free-form suggestions. They are selected from a structured library with fixed mastery criteria and domain alignment.
- Goals come from a fixed template library aligned to VB-MAPP and ABLLS-R domains.
- The goal engine selects templates deterministically from assessment levels, safety flags, parent priorities, available practice time, and child context.
- AI does not invent goals. The same assessment data maps to the same goal templates.
- Each goal includes a plain-language parent summary, a practice approach, mastery criteria, and where appropriate, safety-aware guidance for hard moments.
Practice design
The exercises attached to goals are based on the kinds of structured teaching steps that would be familiar to behavior analysts and behavior technicians. The difference is that Stridesy presents those steps to a parent or caregiver for short home practice with their child.
- Practice activities translate behavior analytic teaching principles into parent-facing steps.
- Activities use familiar elements such as prompting, reinforcement, shaping, chaining, generalization, and parent-reported data collection.
- The instructions are similar in structure to what behavior technicians and behavior analysts may use during in-person services, but they are rewritten for supervised adults at home.
- Parents log home practice outcomes so professionals can see what was practiced, what is improving, and what may need direct probing before programming decisions.
What Stridesy is not
Stridesy does not create a therapist-client, clinician-client, doctor-patient, school advisor, or other professional relationship. It does not provide professional supervision, clinical decision-making, medical advice, special education advice, treatment, diagnosis, crisis support, or emergency support.
Progress data in Stridesy is parent-reported home practice data. It can be useful for care team conversations, but it should be treated as a home-practice baseline proxy. Professionals should verify skills directly before making programming, treatment, or placement decisions.
Families currently receiving ABA therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, school services, or other professional support should share Stridesy activities and progress reports with their care team so the team can decide whether the activities fit the child's current plan.
Why we are explicit about the methodology
Clinicians deserve to know whether a parent-facing tool is structured, transparent, and bounded. Stridesy is not intended to be a rogue substitute for professional therapy. It is designed to help families practice between sessions, make home data easier to collect, and give providers a clearer view of what is happening outside the clinic, school, or therapy room.
For any questions about how Stridesy is put together, reach out to help@stridesy.app.