Inter-Rater Agreement on the Scale Developed for Identification of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Early Childhood

Abstract

Background Early identification and diagnosis of Autism spectrum disorder ASD is highly beneficial as it facilitates parents to access early intervention which leads to improved childrsquos quality of life. The newly developed scale for identifying ASD is comprised of 40 items which were extracted from 120 pooled items with each component extracted based on the sensitivity and specificity of the scale. The scale included items related to cognitive behaviour and communication components.Aim To estimate the inter-rater agreement on newly developed scale for identification of ASD.Methodology This prospective study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital setting involving children diagnosed with ASD. Two independent raters were involved in the study and the data collected was analysed to determine the inter-rater agreement.Results A total of 45 children were included in the study of which 32 were males and 13 were females and the mean age was recorded as 62.13plusmn1.6 months. The children were predominantly from urban domicile. Both the raters showed very good inter-rater agreement with K statistic varying between 0.683 to 1 and a P value of 0 was derived for each item of the scale mentioned.Conclusion Overall the study results demonstrated a very good inter-rater agreement on the scale among all the 40 items.