Psychometric Validation of the Autism Impact Measure (AIM).
Richard Houghton, Brigitta Monz, Kiely Law and 4 others
PMID 30968318WHAT IT FOUND
Caregiver reports on the AIM separated children with ASD by expected severity, including verbal versus non-verbal.
It was not tested after therapy, so use it as a symptom questionnaire, not proof an intervention worked.
Key findings
01The total AIM score separated all pre-defined known groups, and higher scores were found in groups expected to have more severe ASD symptoms.
02For the total AIM score, the estimated clinically important responder threshold range was 3.30% to 8.25% of the rescaled score range, or 10.8 to 27.1 raw points.
03The AIM Communication domain had a correlation of 0.18 with the Social Communication Questionnaire Communication domain, although the AIM Communication domain itself was replicated perfectly in factor analysis.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it did not test whether the AIM changes after therapy or tracks each child over time. The clinically important change thresholds were estimated from score distributions only, not from caregiver reports of real change. About 10% of respondents were excluded from the main analysis because they did not complete all items, and the AIM has no published method for handling missing items. All information came from caregiver report, so child characteristics such as IQ may be estimates rather than measured values. The SCQ and RBS-R were not completed at the same time as the AIM, so differences could reflect timing as well as questionnaire meaning. The sample was drawn from a US online research community and was mostly mothers, so findings may not apply to all families or clinical settings.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude the AIM has been shown to detect treatment change. It was given once to caregivers, with no follow-up or intervention, and the change thresholds were estimated from scores, not from real patient change.