Psychometric issues and current scales for assessing Autism Spectrum Disorders (2018)
Chapter 2 | pp 26 - 71
Citation
Naglieri, J. A., Chambers, K. M., McGoldrick, K. D., & Goldstein, S. (2018). Psychometric issues and current scales for assessing autism spectrum disorder. In S. Goldstein & S. Ozonoff (Eds.), Assessment of autism spectrum disorder (2nd ed., pp. 26–71). The Guilford Press.
Abstract
The study of any psychological disorder is dependent upon the tools that are used, as these tools directly influence what is learned about the subject in research as well as clinical practice. As in all areas of science, what we discover depends upon the quality of the instruments we use and the information they provide. Better-made instruments yield more accurate and reliable information. Instruments that uncover more information relevant to the subject being examined will have better validity, and ultimately will more completely inform both researchers and clinicians. The tools we use for diagnosis have a substantial impact on the reliability and validity of the information we obtain and the decisions we make. Simply put, the better the tool, the more valid and reliable the decisions, the more useful the information obtained, and the better the services that are eventually provided. In this chapter, the tools used for assessing the characteristics of children and adolescents who have autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are examined. This chapter has two goals. First, we review the important psychometric qualities of test reliability and validity. The aim of this first section is to illustrate the relevance of reliability and validity for the decisions made by clinicians and researchers whose goal is to understand ASD better. We emphasize the practical implications these psychometric issues have for the assessment of ASD, and the implications they have for the interpretation of results within and across instruments. Special attention is also paid to scale development procedures, particularly methods used to develop derived scores. The second section of this chapter focuses on the various measures used to assess ASD. The structure, reliability, and validity of each instrument are summarized. The overall aim of the chapter is to provide an examination of the relevant psychometric issues and the extent to which researchers and clinicians can have confidence in the tools they use to assess ASD.
Copyright
Holder: The Guilford Press
Year: 2018
