Utility of Teacher-Report Assessments of Autistic Severity in Japanese School Children

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that many children with milder autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are undiagnosed, untreated, and being educated in mainstream classes without support and that school teachers might be the best persons to identify a child's social deviance. At present, only a few screening measures using teacher ratings of ASD have been validated. The aim of this study was to examine the utility of teacher ratings on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), a quantitative measure of ASD. We recruited 130 participants aged 4 to 17 years from local schools or local pediatric outpatient clinics specializing in neurodevelopmental disorders that included 70 children with ASD. We found that the teacher-report SRS can be reliably and validly applied to children as a screening tool or for other research purposes, and it also has cross-cultural comparability. Although parent-teacher agreement was satisfactory overall, a discrepancy existed for children with ASD, especially for girls with ASD. To improve sensitivity in children at higher risk, especially girls, we cannot overstate the importance of using standardized norms specific to gender, informant, and culture.

Normative data and psychometric properties of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire among Japanese school-aged children

“…These studies cannot be easily compared because the age ranges studied in their samples were not identical. However, the tendency for Japanese parents or teachers to give lower scores to children’s behaviors appears consistent among questionnaires such as the CBCL [29], ADHD-RS [33,34], and Social Responsiveness Scale [40,41]. One partial explanation for the relatively lower scores of Japanese children on behavioral measures such as the SDQ is that Japanese informants tend to respond to Likert-type ratings by choosing the scale’s midpoint, whereas U.S. informants tend to choose the scale’s extreme values [42].…”

Observational and Reported Measures of Language and Pragmatics in Young People with Autism: A Comparison of Respondent Data and Gender Profiles

“…Szatmari et al (1994) found differences between parent and teacher reports of autism severity for the same child, with teachers regularly reporting lower levels of difficulty than parents. Other studies indicate that teachers are likely to rate FwASD as having fewer observable difficulties in school than MwASD (Kamio et al 2013;Mandy et al 2012). Observable autism severity may be context-dependent (Posserud et al 2006) and FwASD may particularly benefit from the structured environment of school, thus reducing externalising behaviours (Szatmari et al 1994).…”

Assessment of Autistic Traits in Children Aged 2 to 4½ Years With the Preschool Version of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS‐P): Findings from Japan

“…By increasing the cut‐off scores to 89.5 for the parent form, and to 70.0 for the teacher form, the specificity increased to 0.92 for parent scores, and 0.83 for teacher scores. Among a mixed Japanese sample that included ASD, non‐ASD clinical and typical developing children, a parent‐rated score of 53.5 for boys and 52.5 for girls was suggested as being optimal for the purpose of primary screening for case referral and 109.5 for boys and 102.5 for girls for the purpose of secondary screening for diagnostic classification [Kamio, Inada, et al, ], while teacher‐rated scores of 58.0 for boys (sensitivity 0.725, specificity 0.667) and 43.0 for girls (sensitivity 0.789, specificity 0.667) were judged as being optimal screening cut‐off scores [Kamio, Moriwaki, & Inada, ]. These previous studies have shown that the SRS can be regarded as a valid screening tool across different cultural settings, although purpose‐specific cut‐off scores need to be chosen.…”