Scoping review of behavioral coding measures used to evaluate parent responsiveness of children with autism or elevated risk of autism.
Fifty years of parent-responsiveness codes are now sorted—use their short checklist so your data can play nicely with the next lab.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Emerson et al. (2023) hunted down every paper that codes how parents respond to kids with autism. They found 50 years of tools and listed them all.
The team did not run new kids. They mapped the old coding systems so you can pick one that lets studies talk to each other.
What they found
No numbers were compared. Instead, the review shows a jungle of coding names, rules, and scores.
They give a short checklist for choosing a system that lines up across labs.
How this fits with other research
Manolov (2026) also hands you a tool pick-list, but for single-case stats software. Both papers save you shopping time—one for coding, one for numbers.
Murray et al. (2014) warn that only using diagnosed kids can hide true symptom links. E et al. answer by giving coding schemes that work in both diagnosed and risk-only samples, so you can test the bias Louise flags.
Jacobs (2019) pushes randomization tests for small N designs. If you follow Jacobs and run tiny parent-child studies, E et al.’s coding menu gives you the behavior lens you will need.
Why it matters
If you study parent coaching, picking mismatched codes kills meta-analysis later. Use the best-practice model from this paper to lock in a system early. Your data will plug into future reviews instead of sitting alone on a shelf.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The topic of how parents react (e.g., how they talk and act) to their child with autism or elevated likelihood of autism, often called parent responsiveness, has been studied by researchers for over 50 years. Many methods for measuring behaviors around parent responsiveness have been created depending on what researchers were interested in discovering. For example, some include only the behaviors that the parent does/says in reacting to something the child does/says. Other systems look at all behaviors in a period of time between child and parent (e.g., who talked/acted first, how much the child or parent said/did). The purpose of this article was to provide a summary of how and what researchers looked at around parent responsiveness, describe the strengths and barriers of these approaches, and suggest a "best practices" method of looking at parent responsiveness. The model suggested could make it more possible to look across studies to compare study methods and results. The model could be used in the future by researchers, clinicians, and policymakers to provide more effective services to children and their families.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2023 · doi:10.1177/13623613231152641