The validity and reliability of the simplified Chinese version of the Social Communication Questionnaire

Abstract

This study aims to validate the simplified Chinese version of the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) in children aged 2–12 years from both general and clinical populations. We recruited 819 Chinese children in this study, including 505 typically developing (TD) children, 202 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 112 children with non‐ASD neurodevelopmental disorders. All the children's parents completed the simplified Chinese version of the SCQ and all children with ASD were additionally assessed for intelligence and the Childhood Autism Rating Scale to confirm their diagnosis. We have developed a 40‐item, 4‐factor structure of SCQ with two domains (social communication and social interaction; and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior), which showed adequate goodness of fit (comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.96, Tucker‐Lewis index [TLI] = 0.95, standardized root mean squared residual [SRMR] = 0.07, root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.05), with good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.92). We have provided different cut‐offs to distinguish ASD cases from TD children (11 for children under 4 years [sensitivity: 0.96, specificity: 0.95], 12 for children 4 years and above [sensitivity: 0.93, specificity: 0.98]) or children with other neurodevelopmental disorders (14 [sensitivity: 0.85, specificity: 0.88]). Through this large sample validation, we confirmed that the simplified Chinese version of the SCQ could be used for children aged 2–12 years with relatively good psychometric properties. Lay Summary We aimed to develop the simplified Chinese version of the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) for Chinese children aged 2–12 years as a screening tool to identified potential risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We have developed a 40‐item, 4‐factor structure of SCQ with two domains, which showed adequate goodness of fit and good psychometric properties. We also provided different cut‐offs to identify ASD cases in general or clinical populations.

The psychometric properties of the Greek version of the Social Communication Questionnaire

“…Furthermore, our study evaluated the four‐factor structure, which has been used in the original instrument (Berument et al, 1999) and which maps onto the three DSM‐IV domains. This approach is consistent with some recent cross‐linguistic adaptations of SCQ (Arabic: Aldosari et al 2019; simplified Chinese: Liu et al, 2022). Additionally, we considered a two‐factor structure, consistent with the two domains of DSM‐5 (the S‐ and R‐ domains discussed in Liu et al, 2022).…”

“…This approach is consistent with some recent cross‐linguistic adaptations of SCQ (Arabic: Aldosari et al 2019; simplified Chinese: Liu et al, 2022). Additionally, we considered a two‐factor structure, consistent with the two domains of DSM‐5 (the S‐ and R‐ domains discussed in Liu et al, 2022). Our results suggested that the fit of the four‐factor model was better than that of the two‐factor model, with the fit of the latter being at the margins of acceptability thresholds.…”

“…Construct validity was corroborated by confirming the four‐factor structure considered in the development of the original version of the instrument, while, as expected, autistic children presented lower SCQ total and subscale scores than neurotypical children. Our study is the first to validate the four‐factor construct of ASD in Greek‐speaking populations with a CFA analysis, and one of the few studies that use this method to examine construct validity in a cross‐cultural adaptation of SCQ (examples of other studies: Chinese: Gau et al, 2011; simplified Chinese: Liu et al, 2022).…”

“…First, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the SCQ in samples A and B to evaluate the fit of the four-factor structure used in the original SCQ (Berument et al, 1999), as well as in recent cross-cultural adaptations (e.g., Arabic: Aldosari et al, 2019;simplified Chinese: Liu et al, 2022). We also evaluated the fit of a two-factor structure corresponding to the DSM-5 and consisting of an S-domain (social communication and interaction; factors 1, 2, and 3) and the R-domain (factor 4) (see Liu et al, 2022); as well as the fit of a unidimensional model (SCQ total without any factors).…”

“…The SCQ is currently available in 17 published translations. Earlier studies often recommend a cutoff threshold of 15 for the SCQ total score for differentiating school‐aged autistic and neurotypical children with high sensitivity and specificity (e.g., English: Berument et al, 1999; Arabic: Aldosari et al, 2019; Chinese: Gau et al, 2011; simplified Chinese: Liu et al, 2022; German: Bölte et al, 2008; Portuguese: Sato et al, 2009; Turkish: Avcil et al, 2015; Öner et al, 2012), although the optimal threshold may depend on age or diagnostic categorization (Corsello et al, 2007).…”