Behavior and Sensory Interests Questionnaire: Validation in a sample of children with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disability.
The BSIQ is a quick, reliable parent interview that captures repetitive and sensory behaviors in children with autism, ID, or typical development.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team built a new caregiver interview called the Behavior and Sensory Interests Questionnaire, or BSIQ.
They asked parents about repetitive hand flaps, spinning objects, and unusual sensory habits.
Kids with autism, kids with intellectual disability, and typically developing kids all took part.
What they found
The BSIQ gave steady scores when parents were asked again a few weeks later.
Two different raters also gave similar scores, so the tool looks reliable.
It measured what it claims to measure across all three groups.
How this fits with other research
Mace et al. (1990) and Lord et al. (1997) built earlier short checklists for general autistic behaviors.
The BSIQ keeps the quick format but zooms in on sensory and repetitive items only.
Weiss et al. (2001) created a longer 52-item caregiver interview for self-injury and aggression.
The BSIQ trims the time to 15-40 minutes while still covering the same kind of detail for repetitive actions.
Kleinert et al. (2007) also validated a repetitive-behavior scale, giving more confidence that caregiver reports work for this domain.
Why it matters
You now have a focused, parent-friendly tool that takes less than an hour.
Use it during intake to spot sensory quirks and repetitive habits that might shape your treatment plan.
Because it works for kids with autism, ID, or typical development, you can compare scores across caseloads without switching forms.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Repetitive behaviors, restricted interests and other unusual sensory behaviors often significantly impact the lives of many individuals with developmental disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Identifying specific patterns of atypical behaviors across different disorders allows for improved specificity of diagnoses, monitoring response to treatment and elucidating the genetic and neurobiological underpinnings of these disorders. The Behavior and Sensory Interests Questionnaire (BSIQ) is a newly designed, continuous dimensional instrument that comprehensively assesses the type, frequency, intensity, age of onset, and duration of these behaviors. The BSIQ takes 15-40 min to administer to a caregiver in an interview format. Using a large sample of children with either ASD, intellectual disabilities or who were typically developing, the construct validity of the BSIQ was confirmed using a series of multi-group confirmatory factor analysis models. Configural and metric invariance were satisfied, but not scalar invariance, as expected. The BSIQ showed acceptable internal consistency, excellent inter-rater reliability and excellent test-retest reliability.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.09.004