Confirmatory factor analytic structure and measurement invariance of quantitative autistic traits measured by the social responsiveness scale-2.
SRS-2 subscales cleanly map to the two DSM-5 autism factors and stay fair across age, sex, and reporter.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team ran a confirmatory factor analysis on SRS-2 forms from a large autism sample. They wanted to see if the two DSM-5 trait factors—social communication and restricted/repetitive behaviors—showed up in the numbers.
They checked boys, girls, kids, teens, parents, and teachers to be sure the pattern held across groups.
What they found
The two-factor model fit the data well. Social-communication items loaded on one factor and RRB items on the other.
The factors stayed separate across age, sex, and who filled out the form. Yet the two factors were still strongly linked, so a child high on one usually scored high on the other.
How this fits with other research
Kuenssberg et al. (2014) found the same two-factor shape in the short Autism Quotient. Together the papers show the two-factor trait picture is not just a quirk of one survey.
English et al. (2020) looked at the full Autism Quotient and saw three factors instead of two. The difference is method: that study mixed autistic and non-autistic adults, while the SRS-2 paper stayed inside the autism spectrum. The extra factor pops up only when you stretch across diagnoses.
Papageorgiou et al. (2008) had already split RRBs into ‘insistence on sameness’ and ‘sotor repetitive’ pieces. The SRS-2 keeps RRBs as one block, so future work could break that block further.
Why it matters
You can treat SRS-2 Social-Communication and RRB subscales as solid, invariant metrics for boys, girls, children, and adults. Use them to track change after intervention instead of relying on the shaky total score. Just remember that high social scores usually ride along with high RRB scores, so plan treatments that tackle both areas together.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Understanding the factor structure of autistic symptomatology is critical to the discovery and interpretation of causal mechanisms in autism spectrum disorder. We applied confirmatory factor analysis and assessment of measurement invariance to a large (N = 9635) accumulated collection of reports on quantitative autistic traits using the Social Responsiveness Scale, representing a broad diversity of age, severity, and reporter type. A two-factor structure (corresponding to social communication impairment and restricted, repetitive behavior) as elaborated in the updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) criteria for autism spectrum disorder exhibited acceptable model fit in confirmatory factor analysis. Measurement invariance was appreciable across age, sex, and reporter (self vs other), but somewhat less apparent between clinical and nonclinical populations in this sample comprised of both familial and sporadic autism spectrum disorders. The statistical power afforded by this large sample allowed relative differentiation of three factors among items encompassing social communication impairment (emotion recognition, social avoidance, and interpersonal relatedness) and two factors among items encompassing restricted, repetitive behavior (insistence on sameness and repetitive mannerisms). Cross-trait correlations remained extremely high, that is, on the order of 0.66-0.92. These data clarify domains of statistically significant factoral separation that may relate to partially-but not completely-overlapping biological mechanisms, contributing to variation in human social competency. Given such robust intercorrelations among symptom domains, understanding their co-emergence remains a high priority in conceptualizing common neural mechanisms underlying autistic syndromes.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2014 · doi:10.1177/1362361313500382