Convergent and Discriminant Validity of the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS).
VB-MAPP Milestones is valid for tracking communication and social skills in autistic learners, but skip the Barriers section if you want to measure problem behavior.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team compared two big autism checklists. One is the VB-MAPP Milestones and Barriers. The other is the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales.
They wanted to know if both tools measure the same skills. They gave both to a group of children with autism.
What they found
VB-MAPP Milestones lined up well with Vineland social and communication scores. Higher scores on one meant higher scores on the other.
VB-MAPP Barriers did not match Vineland maladaptive scores. Barriers did not predict problem behavior.
How this fits with other research
Hill et al. (2008) and Rojahn et al. (2003) also ran convergent-validity checks. They showed that behavior scales overlap where they should. The new study repeats this pattern with VB-MAPP and Vineland.
Older tools like the BSE were useful in the 1990s. C et al. (1990, 1992, 1997) proved the BSE could flag autistic features. VB-MAPP now gives the same answers with a larger, newer sample. It replaces the BSE for day-to-day skill tracking.
Navas et al. (2012) built a brand-new adaptive scale for young kids. VB-MAPP does not replace that scale, but it adds language and social items that line up with Vineland. You can pick either tool and still get solid data.
Why it matters
Use VB-MAPP Milestones when you need a quick picture of communication and social growth. Skip the Barriers section if you want to track problem behavior; grab the Vineland or ABC instead. This saves time and keeps your data clean.
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Score only the Milestones section this week and compare totals to last quarter's Vineland social scores.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behavior analysts frequently use the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) to assess the language and social skills of children with autism in everyday practice and in research. Despite the widespread use of the VB-MAPP, its psychometric characteristics have not been extensively investigated. To provide information about its convergent validity, we calculated correlations between scores earned by 235 children with autism on the VB-MAPP and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS), a commonly used assessment with good reliability and validity. We obtained moderate or strong positive correlations between the VB-MAPP Milestones score and VABS Communication, Socialization, and Daily Living Skills subdomains. There was also a strong positive correlation between the VB-MAPP Milestones score and VABS overall raw score. These findings suggest that the VB-MAPP Milestones Assessment measures aspects of social and communicative behavior comparable to those indexed by these VABS subdomains which, like prior findings, supports the use of the Milestones Assessment. No significant relationship was observed between the VB-MAPP Barriers score and the VABS Internalizing, Externalizing, or overall Maladaptive Behavior scores. These findings, like prior findings, question the value of the VB-MAPP's Barriers Assessment as a measure of maladaptive behavior.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.1016/j.rasd.2015.12.009