Measures in intervention research with young children who have autism.
Autism preschool studies use too many one-off checklists; pick common, meaningful measures and track why skills last.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mark and colleagues read every early-intervention paper they could find for preschoolers with autism. They listed every test, checklist, or scale the studies used.
The team wanted to see which tools were popular and which were missing.
What they found
Most papers leaned on simple developmental or behavior checklists. Hardly any tracked why a skill stuck or why a child struggled.
The review found no gold-standard set of measures.
How this fits with other research
Bolte et al. (2013) counted 289 different tools across later autism trials. Most were used only once, backing up Mark’s warning about chaos.
Matson (2007) narrowed the lens to ABA studies and echoed the same worry: pick the wrong ruler and an intervention can look like a miracle or a flop.
Gandhi et al. (2022) zoomed in on one slice—maintenance probes—and showed the mess is still there two decades later.
Why it matters
Before you run a program, list your measures. Choose tools that other BCBAs also use so your data can stack up. Add one mediator probe—like joint-attention during mand training—to see why change happens. Share the list in your next team meeting so everyone scores the same thing.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In this paper, the outcome measures used in intervention research with young children with autism were analyzed. Two types of literature were reviewed: reports evaluating specific intervention practices and reports of complete intervention programs. A description of the types of measures used in each literature source and measurement practices reported were analyzed and described. In addition, the intervention program literature was reviewed to determine whether factors that may mediate outcomes were measured. Finally, the literature was reviewed to identify instances in which multiple risk and opportunity factors were analyzed to account for variations in outcomes.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2002 · doi:10.1023/a:1020598023809