Development and Psychometric Properties of a New Questionnaire to Assess Mental Health and Concerning Behaviors in Children and Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): The Assessment of Concerning Behavior (ACB) Scale

Joanne Tarver, Silia Vitoratou, Mathilde Mastroianni, Natalie Heaney, Eleanor Bennett, Felicity Gibbons, Federico Fiori, Michael Absoud, Lakshmi Ramasubramanian, Emily Simonoff, Paramala Santosh

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Although 70% of autistic children and young people meet criteria for co-occurring psychiatric conditions, there are few screening measures specifically for autistic individuals. We describe the development and validation of the Assessment of Concerning Behavior (ACB), an instrument co-developed with the autistic community to assess mental health and problematic/risky behaviors. Items include descriptions to facilitate symptom recognition by autistic people, and carers/professionals. The ACB was completed by 255 parents, 149 autistic children and young people and 30 teachers. Internal consistency, stability and validity was assessed. The ACB parent-version fit a two-factor model (internalizing and externalizing problems) and showed adequate test–retest reliability, internal consistency and construct validity. The ACB is a promising new measure for research and clinical use in autism.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2812–2828
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
Volume51
Issue number8
Early online date14 Oct 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2021

Bibliographical note

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funding: This manuscript summarizes independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme (RP-PG-1211-20016). ES additionally receives support from the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley Foundation Trust (IS-BRC-1215-20018), the NIHR through a Senior Investigator Award (NF-SI-0514-10073), the European Union Innovative Medicines Initiative (EU-IMI 115300), Autistica (7237), Medical Research Council (MR/R000832/1, MR/P019293/1), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC 003041/1), Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charitable Foundation (GSTT EF1150502) and the Maudsley Charity.

Keywords

  • Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
  • Emotional and behavioral problems
  • Instrument development and validation
  • Risk
  • Behavior Rating Scale
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Parents/psychology
  • Humans
  • Mental Health/trends
  • Male
  • Psychometrics/methods
  • Caregivers/psychology
  • Young Adult
  • Problem Behavior/psychology
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Female
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Child
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder/diagnosis

Access to Document

  • Tarver2020_Article_DevelopmentAndPsychometricProp

    This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

    Final published version, 747 KBLicence: CC BY 3.0

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