Family and child characteristics affect the accuracy of the Social Communication Questionnaire

What is it about?

Screeners are used to help identify children who are more likely to have ASD than their peers. Ideally screeners should be accurate for different groups of children and families. This study examined how well the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) predicts ASD. We found that male sex, lower household income, lower maternal education and Black race were associated with higher SCQ scores. In this study an SCQ cut-point of 11 worked best across the different sociodemographic groups in our sample.

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Why is it important?

This study shows that the SCQ is not equally accurate across different demographic groups. These findings point to the need to understand the factors responsible for varying levels of accuracy, so better screeners can be developed.