The Developmental Assessment of Social Communication Ability (DASCA): initial creation and psychometric description.
Aaron J Kaat, Audrey Thurm, Cristan Farmer and 6 others
PMID 41102748WHAT IT FOUND
Caregiver-reported social communication in children with developmental conditions was rated as one overall skill across language levels.
Overall scores showed little meaningful difference by language, age, or sex. It is not yet tested for tracking therapy change.
Key findings
01The final item bank had 184 items and mainly fit one general social communication factor rather than separate social communication domains.
02Items were sorted by language level: 62 for both language groups, 79 for more verbal individuals, and 43 for less verbal individuals.
03At the overall score level, differences by language, age, or sex assigned at birth were minimal to none, despite some item-level age effects.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The same dataset was used for both exploring and confirming the factor structure, so the one-factor result needs testing in a new sample. Much of the data were collected during COVID-19, when caregivers had fewer chances to observe children with peers or in community settings. The measure is caregiver-reported and focused on observable home behaviors; it does not capture internal states or peer interactions well. The adaptive version was still being field tested, so the paper does not show that the final tool works in routine use or tracks therapy change. The study reports measure development and initial psychometric results, not patient outcomes or treatment effects.
Declared interests
Funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Mental Health. The supplied text does not state other author conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as a proven tool for monitoring therapy change. The paper reports item development and initial psychometric results, and field testing of the adaptive version is still ongoing.
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 →