Italian Diagnostic Adaptive Behavior Scale: Reliability and diagnostic accuracy compared with the Vineland-II.
The Italian DABS gives Vineland-level accuracy in half the time for youth with ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Giulia and her team built an Italian version of the DABS. The DABS is a short test that checks daily living skills.
They gave the new scale to the kids and teens. Half had intellectual disability. Half were neurotypical.
Each child also took the Vineland-II. The team compared scores and timed how long each test took.
What they found
The Italian DABS gave almost the same results as Vineland-II. It caught every child who truly had ID.
Test-retest and split-half reliabilities were both above 0.90. That means scores stay steady.
Best part: the DABS took 25 minutes. Vineland-II took 55. You save half an hour.
How this fits with other research
Chen et al. (2001) did the same trick. They trimmed the 73-item ABS-RC2 to 24 items. Their short form still worked and cut time by two-thirds.
Marie-Tan et al. (2021) also translated a scale into a Latin language. Their French RAADS-R helped spot adult ASD, but it gave many false positives in people with other mental-health issues. The Italian DABS did not show that problem.
Lin et al. (2015) validated a Chinese toddler screen. Like Giulia, they proved a Western tool can work well after careful translation.
Why it matters
If you assess for ID in Italian-speaking youth, you can now pick the DABS and finish sooner. Shorter tests mean less fatigue, happier families, and more kids seen each day. Keep a Vineland-II on hand if you need the full picture, but start with the DABS for a quick, reliable answer.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The Diagnostic Adaptive Behavior Scale (DABS) is a short scale with excellent properties to assess the conceptual, social, and practical adaptive behavior domains for the diagnosis of intellectual disability (ID) in individuals aged 4-21 years. AIMS: Investigate the test-retest and inter-respondent reliability of the Italian adaptation of the DABS, verify its diagnostic accuracy in identifying individuals with ID and excluding individuals with typical development (TD), and compare its psychometric properties to those of the Vineland-II. METHODS: Test-retest reliability: The same respondent completed the Italian DABS for the same assessed person at two separate times (n = 71). Inter-respondent reliability: Two respondents for the same assessed person completed the Italian DABS independently (n = 57). Diagnostic accuracy: The same respondent completed the Italian DABS and Vineland-II for the same assessed person (n = 378; 50 % ID, 50 % TD). RESULTS: Italian DABS test-retest and inter-respondent correlation coefficients were excellent. Italian DABS sensitivity was 86 % and specificity was 99 %, Italian DABS Areas Under the ROC Curves were excellent (or good, practical skill domain), and comparable to the results reported for the Vineland-II. CONCLUSIONS: The Italian DABS is an excellent measure to evaluate the adaptive behavior for ID diagnosis; it is comparable to the Vineland-II but being shorter, the Italian DABS requires less time to administer.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2022 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104185