Concurrent validity of Open‐Ended Functional Assessment Interviews with functional analysis

Four kids with autism took part. Each child first had an open-ended caregiver interview.

Right after, the team ran a standard functional analysis (FA) with four conditions.

They compared the interview guess to the FA result to see if they matched.

The interview gave the correct function in 3 out of 4 cases.

That is 74 % agreement—good enough to plan your first FA test conditions.

Bailey et al. (2021) also looked at caregiver reports. They fed QABF data into a computer model and got even better accuracy. Their work extends this idea: machines can sharpen parent guesses.

Morrison et al. (2017) found parent reports of toddler skills line up with direct tests. Their null result supports using parent words as a starting point, just like Gossou does for behavior function.

Bong et al. (2021) showed a 10-minute caregiver interview can flag ASD risk. Together these papers say: short parent talks are cheap, fast, and surprisingly solid screeners.

You can save time. Start with an open-ended interview, pick the top caregiver guess, and run only that FA condition first. If the data match, you may skip the rest. If not, you still have the full FA to fall back on. Either way, you get to effective treatment faster.