The Application of Social Communication Questionnaire in Primary Screening for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders(ASDs)

Abstract

ASD is a common neurodevelopmental disorder whose core symptom includes impaired reciprocal social interaction. In recent years, the early detection of ASDs has been widely studied. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity of Social communication questionnaire(SCQ)as the primary screening instrument in Mainland China. In this study, SCQ was completed by parents of children attending four kindergardens in Shanghai. Among the children screened, 2 children was found to show a high risk for ASDs. In our small samples, the estimated prevalence of ASD is 2.3/1000. Autism spectrum disorders children were recruited as the patient group, the non-ASDs children participating in the screen were selected as the control group. The sensitivity and specificity of SCQ were 0.74 and 0.94. Analying the distribution of questionnaire scores and the response pattern of items, we found that total SCQ scores ranged from 0 to 20, the mean is 8.74, SD=3.9, and nearly normally distributed. Some items on the questionnaire were answered as‘autism-positive’for up to 70% of children in the control group and surpassed the patient group. In conclusion, the cutoff score recommend by the SCQ manual may be too high for using it as a primary screening tool. Lowering the cutoff score may improve the sensitivity. Some items in the SCQ are not useful in discriminating ASD and normal children.