Some findings on the use of the adaptive behavior scale with autistic children.
The ABS Part I gives solid parent-teacher agreement and tracks real change, while Part II is shaky—so lean on Part I and double-check Part II with other tools.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team gave the Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS) to 30 autistic kids .
Parents and teachers each filled out the same form.
They compared answers after one school year to see what matched and what changed.
What they found
Part I (daily living skills) got a large share agreement between parents and teachers.
Part II (problem behaviors) only matched a large share of the time.
Part I also caught real growth over the year, while Part II stayed flat.
How this fits with other research
Fung et al. (2018) found the same pattern with day-care workers. Parents and staff agreed more on daily skills than on hard behaviors.
Spiegel et al. (2023) later showed video coding can track short-term change, backing up that Part I really is sensitive to growth.
Hus et al. (2014) and de Bildt et al. (2011) moved the field to ADOS severity scores. These newer tools give cleaner, age-fair numbers than the old ABS.
Levin et al. (2014) found poor agreement between ADOS and parent SRS scores. This echoes the 1981 warning: different raters and tools often clash on behavior ratings.
Why it matters
Use Part I of the ABS for progress tracking and parent meetings. Skip Part II for big decisions. If you need tighter data, pair it with newer tools like ADOS or video coding. Always ask more than one adult before labeling a behavior as "severe."
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two studies on the use of the AAMD Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS) with autistic children are reported. The first study compared ratings by parents and teachers on the same child. For Part I (Adaptive), significant correlations were found on total score and on 7 out of 10 individual scales. For Part II (Behavior), significant correlations were found on only 3 out of 14 scales and not on total score. The second study examined change measured by the ABS across an academic year. For Part I, significant change occurred on 5 of the 10 scales and on total score; for Part II significant differences were found on 2 of the 14 scales and not on total score. Correlations with IQ, Social Quotient (SQ), and degree of autism revealed a similar pattern. The implications of the differences between the two parts of the ABS and their utility for autistic children are discussed.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1981 · doi:10.1007/BF01531684