Toddler autism screening questionnaire: development and potential clinical validity.
A 15-item parent form gave near-perfect autism flags in a small Taiwanese sample, but later larger studies show slightly lower yet still strong accuracy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Doctors in Taiwan built a new 15-question parent form. They call it the Toddler Autism Screening Questionnaire, or TASQ.
Parents circle yes or no about play, eye contact, and words. It takes three minutes.
What they found
The form caught every toddler later diagnosed with autism. It also said “no autism” for almost all typical kids.
No test is perfect, but these numbers are very high for a first try.
How this fits with other research
Tsai et al. (2019) later tested the Taiwanese M-CHAT-R/F in a bigger group. Their tool found 86 % of kids with autism, a little lower than the 100 % in this paper. The later study is now the one most clinics use, but the old TASQ still shows that short parent forms can work.
Nah et al. (2019) made an even shorter 5-item screen. It was easier to score, yet it missed more kids. The trade-off is clear: fewer items save time but lose some accuracy.
Srisinghasongkram et al. (2016) saw the same pattern in Thai toddlers. Two-step M-CHAT scoring gave 91 % sensitivity, again below the TASQ claim. The high TASQ numbers may come from its small, hand-picked sample, not magic questions.
Why it matters
If you screen in Taiwan, use the M-CHAT-R/F-T today. Keep the TASQ in mind as proof that a 15-item parent form can be enough. When you build local screens, focus on social items and keep wording short. Always follow a failed screen with full assessment; no brief tool catches every child.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
No feasible screening instrument is available for early detection of children with autism in Taiwan. The existing instruments may not be appropriate for use in Taiwan due to different health care systems and child-rearing cultures. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a screening questionnaire for generic autism. The initial 18-item screening questionnaire was developed by a child psychiatrist using face-to-face interviews with 10 families of children with autism and then tested on a sample of families of 18 children with autism and of 59 typically developing children. Of these 18 items, 15 had fair or better item discrimination (kappa >0.20) and were selected for the revised screening questionnaire. In the revised questionnaire, cutoff scores of 5 and 6 offered 100% sensitivity and 96.5% specificity, with the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.983. The revised screening instrument has high sensitivity and specificity, making it potentially useful for screening Taiwanese children at risk for autism. This instrument should be further tested in a population-based study.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2012 · doi:10.1177/1362361311429694