The screen for social interaction (SSI): a screening measure for autism spectrum disorders in preschoolers.

The team built two short checklists for parents. One has 26 items, the other 21.

They asked 200 parents of preschoolers to fill them out. Some kids had ASD, some had other delays, some were typical.

Then they checked if the scores matched the real diagnoses.

The short forms caught about 8 out of the kids who truly had ASD.

They also labeled 3 out of 10 non-ASD kids as possible ASD.

That accuracy is good enough for a first quick screen, not for a final diagnosis.

Rogers et al. (2017) got similar results with the 2–4½-year Social Responsiveness Scale. Both tools use parent answers and hit the same 80 % accuracy range.

Le Couteur et al. (2008) showed that full gold-standard tests like ADI-R and ADOS take hours. The new SSI gives you a five-minute preview before you decide if those long tests are needed.

Levin et al. (2014) warned that different ASD measures often disagree. Expect the SSI to sometimes flag a child who later scores below cutoff on ADOS—plan to reconcile results in team meetings.

You now have a 21-item parent form that takes under five minutes and spots most ASD cases in preschoolers. Use it during intake to decide who needs a full evaluation next. Keep the false-positive rate in mind—about one “flagged” child in three will not have ASD, so always follow up with fuller tools before sharing results with families.