Validating the social responsiveness scale for adults with autism.
Wai Chan, Leann E Smith, Jinkuk Hong and 2 others
PMID 28639377WHAT IT FOUND
In adults with autism, a parent-completed 65-item questionnaire separated social communication difficulties from repetitive behavior difficulties.
Social scores linked to daily living and social skills, and repetitive behavior scores linked to behavior problems, including 18 months later.
Key findings
01In adults with autism, the parent-completed questionnaire split into two parts with strong item consistency: social communication/interaction and restricted/repetitive behavior.
02Higher social communication/interaction scores were linked to lower adaptive behavior, and higher restricted/repetitive behavior scores were linked to more behavior problems, both at the same time and 18 months later.
03The questionnaire's social score was linked to an autism interview's social domain, and its repetitive-behavior score was linked to that interview's repetitive-behavior domain, not to the other domain.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The SRS and most comparison measures were completed by mothers, so shared method variance may have increased the correlations. The study had no comparison group of adults without autism or with other disabilities, so it cannot show how well the questionnaire separates these groups. The original SRS version was used, not SRS-2, and some item wording was not ideal for adults. Participants were mostly young adults, 75.9% were male, 93.7% were non-Hispanic White, and 69.6% had an intellectual disability, so results may not apply to older, female, or more diverse adults with autism. Older individuals were less likely to participate at Time 7, and only two waves about 18 months apart were analyzed. The study did not show that teacher-report or self-report versions of the SRS have the same factor structure or measurement quality.
Declared interests
The article states that all authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the SRS as a stand-alone diagnostic test for adult autism. The study showed that parent-reported SRS scores related to other measures in adults already identified with autism, but it had no comparison group and did not show that self-report or teacher-report scores work the same way.