The Convergent Validity Between Two Adult Self-Report Sensory Processing Scales.
Mikayla Mevissen, Mong-Lin Yu, Ted Brown and 1 others
Two adult sensory processing questionnaires (ASH and SPM-2-Adult) show moderate agreement in young adults, so an OT can use either to profile a client's sensory profile.
The ASH's Functional-Problem items correlate less consistently, so those subscales are not interchangeable.
Key findings
1Of 90 correlations between the SPM-2-Adult and ASH sensory subscales, 70% were moderate, 5.6% strong, 11.1% weak, and 13.3% were not statistically significant. The strongest pair was SPM-2-Adult Vision with ASH Visual (rho = 0.804) and the two total scores (rho = 0.858).
2The SPM-2-Adult Taste and Smell subscale was the weakest link: five of its nine correlations with ASH sensory subscales were not statistically significant (rho = 0.011 to 0.248).
3Correlations between the SPM-2-Adult sensory subscales and the ASH Functional-Problem subscales were less consistent: 25% were not significant, 35.9% weak, 39.1% moderate, and 5.6% strong. The ASH Atypical Pain Response subscale was not significantly correlated with five of the eight SPM-2-Adult sensory subscales.
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What it does not show
Convenience sampling through social media means the sample is not representative; the authors acknowledge this limits generalisability. 80% of participants identified as female, so the findings may not apply equally to male or non-binary clients. All participants with any self-reported mental illness, cognitive impairment, or intellectual disability were excluded, so the results say nothing about the scales' performance in the diagnostic groups OTs most commonly assess. The ASH was always completed before the SPM-2-Adult; the order was not randomised, so an order effect cannot be ruled out. Both scales are self-report, so responses are subject to social desirability bias. The sample size (n = 50) was set to detect a single correlation of r = 0.5; with 90 and 64 correlations tested, the study is underpowered for the full set of comparisons. The study was conducted in Australia only; the scales were developed and standardised in the United States, and cross-cultural applicability beyond Australia is untested.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the moderate sensory-subscale correlations as proof that the two scales are fully interchangeable in every domain. The ASH Functional-Problem subscales (Seeks Touch, Gravitational Insecurity, Atypical Pain Response, etc.) showed notably weaker and less consistent correlations with the SPM-2-Adult sensory subscales, and the Taste and Smell domain was the weakest link in both tables. Additionally, every participant was excluded if they had any diagnosed mental illness, cognitive impairment, or intellectual disability, so this study tells you nothing about how the scales perform in the clinical populations an OT most often sees.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →