What If You Can't Ask Them? Psychometric Properties of a Behavioral Assessment of Sibling Relationship Quality.

The team built a new tool called the Sibling Relationship Assessment, or SRA. It watches how close a child with autism stays to a brother or sister during free play.

No one has to answer questions. Coders simply time how often the child picks the sibling over toys or an adult. The study checked if different raters and repeat tests give the same numbers.

The SRA gave steady scores when the same videos were coded again. It also clearly split autism pairs from typical pairs, just as expected.

In short, the tool works without a single spoken word.

Stephens et al. (2018) used surveys and found kids rate their bond higher than parents do. The new SRA sidesteps that disagreement by watching behavior instead of asking.

Glugatch et al. (2021) taught typical siblings play skills and saw more back-and-forth play. The SRA could now track if those lessons truly make the autistic child choose the sibling more.

Dekker et al. (2016) built a school tool that also uses blind coding. Both papers show BCBAs can trust numbers that come from silent cameras, not talk.

You now have a quick, word-free way to measure sibling bond before, during, and after any program. Slip five minutes of free play into your next session, film it, code once, and you have a number that parents can see and trust.