Reliability and Validity of Autistic Diagnostic Check List in Bangladesh

Abstract

The word ‘Autism’ is a new issue of concern in Bangladesh. The disorder was not well known in our country just a few years back. In the past 20 years our understanding of childhood autism has shifted to focus upon biological factors rather than environmental. The disorder has drawn extensively upon behavioral technology to treat specific behavior problems. In fact, it is a developmental disorder with unknown etiology. The present study determined the reliability and validity of Autistic Diagnostic Check List (Dr. Mallika Banerjee, 2007). For this purpose 115 already diagnosed autistic children aged from 3 to 16 years old were selected by purposive sampling technique from eight different autistic and special schools in Chittagong city. There were 60 items which were categorized in six sub-groups, namely general observation, cognition, emotion, social, communication, sensory deficiency. Results showed that Cronbach Alpha of the total scale was.92. Validation of the scale was assured by convergent validity. Finally, the six sub-groups seemed to be uniformly important in the understanding of autism symptoms.