The Social Communication Questionnaire for adults with intellectual disability: SCQ-AID.
A 24-item caregiver checklist spots most autistic adults with ID but needs full testing to confirm.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team took the long Social Communication Questionnaire and cut it down to 24 key items.
They tested the short form on the adults with intellectual disability.
Caregivers filled out the new SCQ-AID while clinicians gave full autism evaluations for comparison.
What they found
The short screener caught 81-89 % of adults who truly had autism.
It also labeled 28-38 % of non-autistic adults as possibly autistic.
In plain words, it rarely misses real cases but often raises false alarms.
How this fits with other research
Heinrich et al. (2018) tested a different 19-item screener called DiBAS-R in almost the same group.
Both tools caught about 8 out of 10 true cases, and both struggled with false positives.
The numbers line up so well that you can trust brief caregiver screeners for adults with ID, yet you still need full assessments to be sure.
Roman-Urrestarazu et al. (2021) shortened a toddler screener to 10 items and also kept good sensitivity.
Together these studies show that trimming item lists works across ages, but shorter always means more false alarms.
Why it matters
Use the SCQ-AID as a quick first pass when you suspect autism in adult clients with ID.
Plan for follow-up evaluations because nearly one in three positive screens will be wrong.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) frequently co-occurs with intellectual disability (ID) and often remains undiagnosed until adulthood. The Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) is a widely used measure to screen for ASD. To improve the utility of the SCQ for adults with ID, the aim of this study was to develop an ID-specific and adult appropriate algorithm for the SCQ using a core set of valid items. These items were identified in one sample (N = 226) and further cross-validated in a second, independent sample (N = 225) from Germany, England and the U.S. The newly developed algorithm has 24 items compared with the 40 items in the original instrument. The reduced item core set yielded similar diagnostic validity as the original algorithm with good sensitivity values (0.81-0.89) and low specificity values (0.62-0.72). Overall, these results suggest that the removed items may not carry diagnostically relevant information in adults with ID; thus, excluding these items may result in a more efficient and age-appropriate screening measure for this population. However, due to the low specificity values, a comprehensive assessment is essential for a final diagnostic assignment. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1481-1490. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1002/aur.1795