Do Parents and Clinicians Agree on Ratings of Autism-Related Behaviors at 12 Months of Age? A Study of Infants at High and Low Risk for ASD.
Suzanne L Macari, Grace C Wu, Kelly K Powell and 3 others
PMID 29181689WHAT IT FOUND
Parent and clinician views of 12-month-old infants' social communication were only moderately aligned.
How the question was worded changed what parents reported, especially about responding to name.
Key findings
01Parent and clinician composite ratings were only moderately related.
02The babbling item showed a significant parent-clinician discrepancy in the low-risk group.
03The response-to-name behavior produced different results depending on whether it was asked as a Likert item or a multiple-choice item.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was mostly Caucasian (85.9%) and parents had high educational attainment, so the results may not apply to more diverse populations. Parent ratings came from many observations at home, while clinician ratings came from structured tasks, so the two measures were not identical in context. The parent questionnaire's Likert items were heavily skewed toward 'Often' and 'Sometimes', so scores were transformed before comparison. Only eight matched items were compared, so this does not cover the full range of either measure.
Declared interests
The named authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that parent report and clinician observation can be used interchangeably for infant social communication. The overall agreement was moderate, and the response-to-name result changed when the question format changed.