Adaptation of the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) to preschool children

Masaki Adachi; Michio Takahashi; Nobuya Takayanagi; Satomi Yoshida; Sayura Yasuda; Masanori Tanaka; Ayako Osato-Kaneda; Manabu Saito; Michito Kuribayashi; Sumi Kato; Kazuhiko Nakamura

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0199590

Adaptation of the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) to preschool children

PLoS One. 2018 Jul 10;13(7):e0199590. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199590. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Research Center for Child Mental Development, Graduate School of Medicine, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan.
² Faculty of Human Studies, Aichi Toho University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan.
³ Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Hirosaki University, Hirosaki, Aomori, Japan.
⁴ Department of Management, Faculty of Business Administration, Hokkai-Gakuen University, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan.
⁵ Department of Management and Low, Aomori Chuo Gakuin University, Aomori, Japan.

Abstract

The Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) is equipped with good properties for screening the broader phenotype of autistic traits, but it is standardized for a limited age range-from 7 to 16 years. To contribute to the early detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), particularly in high functioning children with ASD, likely to cause maladjustments during school age, the present study examined psychometric properties to apply the ASSQ to a younger age. We tested parents' ASSQ ratings for preschool children in clinical (N = 154, average age 60.77 months, range 55-72 months) and community settings (N = 1390, average age 60.53 months, range 57-68 months) in Japan. The results showed, just as in school-aged children, the ASSQ had reliability and validity as a screening instrument for preschool children in community settings. A cut-off of 7 with sensitivity of 0.93 and specificity of 0.84 is recommended for community screening. Still, based on the current study with a clinical group, an optimal cut-off score with high sensitivity and high specificity for parents' ASSQ ratings could not be established. The clinicians should be reminded that the ASSQ is a screening instrument, not a diagnosing instrument. Also, this result suggest multi-faceted evaluation is necessary in clinical settings, for example, the addition of teachers' ratings.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Grants and funding

This research was financially supported by the Hirosaki City, Hirosaki Institute of Neuroscience in Japan, Hirosaki University Institutional Research Grant, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, grant numbers 16K17464 and 16K10239, 15H04889. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.