Brief Report: Caregiver Confidence in Reporting Anxiety Symptoms in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Marian E Williams, Leah I Stein Duker, Cheryl L P Vigen and 2 others
PMID 34363572WHAT IT FOUND
Caregivers were confident rating anxiety symptoms in children with autism, even when the child had limited speech or lower IQ.
Confidence rose with more reported symptoms and fell with greater autism severity; accuracy was not tested.
Key findings
01Caregivers were generally confident rating anxiety symptoms, with a mean confidence score of 3.71 on a 1-to-4 scale and 95% scoring 3 or higher.
02Confidence did not differ by child age, gender, ethnicity, language preference, parent education, IQ, or expressive language.
03Confidence was higher for children with more reported anxiety symptoms and lower for children with greater autism severity.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The analysis included 144 children, while the larger trial had 220 children, and the paper does not explain why the sample is smaller. No diagnostic interviews for anxiety disorders were done, so it is unknown how many children actually had anxiety disorders. The study measured parents' confidence in their ratings, not whether those ratings were accurate compared with child report, teacher report, structured interviews, or physiological signs. The anxiety symptom count has no clinically-defined cutoff, so the number of symptoms cannot be read as a diagnosis. The sample was limited to English- and Spanish-speaking caregivers of children aged 6 to 12 years with ASD, and excluded children with neuromotor or genetic, endocrine, or metabolic conditions.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read high caregiver confidence as evidence that parent-reported anxiety is accurate. The study measured how confident parents felt, not whether their ratings matched diagnostic interviews, child report, teacher report, or physiological signs.