Psychometric properties of the Aberrant Behavior Checklist, the Anxiety, Depression and Mood Scale, the Assessment of Dual Diagnosis and the Social Performance Survey Schedule in adults with intellectual disabilities.
ABC, ADAMS, and SPSS are reliable enough for clinical use with adults with ID, but their factor structure is shaky.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested four rating scales used with adults who have intellectual disability.
They looked at the Aberrant Behavior Checklist, the Anxiety Depression and Mood Scale, the Assessment of Dual Diagnosis, and the Social Performance Survey Schedule.
They checked if each tool gives steady scores and truly measures what it claims to measure.
What they found
ABC, ADAMS, and SPSS showed fair-to-excellent internal consistency and good validity.
The Assessment of Dual Diagnosis had lower reliability and its advanced math model would not run.
Even the better tools had poor fit when the researchers tried confirmatory factor analysis.
How this fits with other research
Hermans et al. (2012) later gave the Dutch ADAMS to older adults with ID and saw stronger factorial validity.
The difference is likely age: the 2012 group was 50-plus while the 2011 sample covered all adults.
Timberlake (1993) and Schaal (1996) already showed child-style depression scales work in adults with ID.
Rojahn et al. (2011) now adds ABC and SPSS to the “usable but watch the factors” list.
Why it matters
You can keep using ABC, ADAMS, and SPSS to screen mood and behavior in adults with ID.
Just remember the score groups inside each scale may not be crystal clear.
If you need tight factor structure, pick the Dutch ADAMS for clients over 50 or add a second tool to double-check.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Progress in clinical research and in empirically supported interventions in the area of psychopathology in intellectual disabilities (ID) depends on high-quality assessment instruments. To this end, psychometric properties of four instruments were examined: the Aberrant Behavior Checklist (ABC), the Assessment of Dual Diagnosis (ADD), the Anxiety, Depression and Mood Scale (ADAMS), and the Social Performance Survey Schedule (SPSS). Data were collected in two community-based groups of adults with mild to profound ID (n = 263). Subscale reliability (internal consistency) ranged from fair to excellent for the ABC, the ADAMS, and the SPSS (mean coefficient α across ABC subscales was .87 (ranging from fair to excellent), the ADAMS subscales .83 (ranging from fair to good), and the SPSS subscales .91 (range from good to excellent). The ADD subscales had generally lower reliability scores with a mean of .59 (ranging from unacceptable to good). Convergent and discriminant validity was determined by bivariate Spearman ρ correlations between subscales of one instrument and the subscales of the other three instruments. For the most part, all four instruments showed solid convergent and discriminant validity. To examine the factorial validity, Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) were attempted with the inter-item covariance matrix of each instrument. Generally, the data did not show good fits with the measurement models for the SPSS, ABC, or the ADAMS (CFA analyses with the ADD would not converge). However, most of the items on these three instruments had significant loadings on their respective factors.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.07.035