The reliability and validity of the Greenspan Social Emotional Growth Chart (GSEGC) in Israeli children with developmental delay and autism-A pilot study.
The Greenspan Social-Emotional Growth Chart is a reliable, no-cost way for Hebrew-speaking families to flag social-emotional concerns in preschoolers with ASD or delay.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Zoma and colleagues tested the Greenspan Social-Emotional Growth Chart (GSEGC) on Israeli preschoolers with autism or developmental delay.
They wanted to know if the short parent checklist gives reliable and valid scores in a non-English sample.
What they found
The GSEGC showed high internal reliability and a clear factor structure.
It was good at ruling out ASD risk, making it a low-cost first-step screener.
How this fits with other research
Leung et al. (2011) created the 21-item Screen for Social Interaction (SSI) for US preschoolers. Their tool also flags ASD risk with about 80 % accuracy. The GSEGC extends this work by showing a different short caregiver scale works in Israeli kids.
Rogers et al. (2017) validated the Japanese SRS-P for the same age group. Both studies found good reliability, giving BCBAs multiple language options.
Liu et al. (2026) later showed ADOS-2 cut scores should be raised when global delay is present. Zoma et al. did not test cut-off tweaks, so the GSEGC should still be followed with full ADOS-2 and the new higher threshold if delay is suspected.
Why it matters
You now have a free, 35-item parent form that reliably spots social-emotional red flags in Hebrew-speaking preschoolers. Use it during intake to decide who needs deeper assessment. Pair the results with the updated ADOS-2 rules from Liu et al. (2026) when developmental delay is also present.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: Healthy social-emotional development in early childhood is important as an indicator of general well-being and for positive outcome in later childhood. Therefore, screening for potential social emotional problems is valuable. Accurate, usable, and affordable screening tools have been especially difficult to develop. The cross cultural validity of a screening instrument should be assessed. The aim of the current study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the Greenspan social-emotional growth chart (GSEGC) in Israeli children of three diagnostic groups: (1) Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) (2) Developmental language disorder (DLD) and (3) Developmental motor delay (DMD). An internal reliability of alpha of 0.95 for the GSEGC standardized for age score and of 0.78 for the sensory processing sub scores was found. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a 5-factor model confirmed an acceptable fit. Positive (62.86%) and negative (94.73%) predictive values also support the clinical usefulness of the GSEGC in identifying children at low risk for ASD. CONCLUSIONS: The GSEGC appears to be a promising tool for the screening of social emotional problems in early childhood. Further studies in different cultures are warranted.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.04.013