Collaborative ECHO research led by Marisa Patti, PhD and Kristen Lyall, ScD of AJ Drexel Autism Institute investigates how a shortened version of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) compares to the full questionnaire in order to potentially decrease the time participants need to take assessments. This research, titled “A Comparative Analysis of the Full and Short Versions of the Social Responsiveness Scale in Estimating an Established Autism Risk Factor Association in ECHO: Do we Get the Same Estimates?” is published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
The SRS questionnaire is used to measure social communication and autism-related traits. Researchers have developed a shortened version with only 16 questions out of the original 65. This shortened version is intended to provide a similar summary of overall traits as the longer version, but take less time to complete.
The shorter SRS has been tested to ensure that it measures autism-related traits. Before this study, it was not clear if the short SRS could be used in the same way as the full SRS to study autism risk factors in different research projects and get similar results. In order to address whether the short version can detect associations in the same way as the full version, researchers examined associations with established risk factors for autism- preterm birth and gestational age.
In this study, which included 2,760 child-parent pairs from 11 research sites, younger gestational age and pre-term birth were associated with higher SRS scores, suggesting these may be risk factors for autism-related behaviors in children. The study also found similar associations using the shortened SRS, suggesting both the short and longer versions can detect autism risk factor associations in comparable ways.
Gathering meaningful information for research studies can be time-consuming for participants. This study suggests that shorter assessments can be as useful as longer ones to help reduce the time participants spend answering questionnaires.
“Studies like ours show that the same information can be collected using shorter, less time-consuming assessments to alleviate participant burden by reducing the administration time of assessments,” Dr. Patti said. “In future work, the short SRS can be used without compromising the ability of the assessment to correctly identify associations.”
Future research studies are needed to investigate how comparable estimates are between the full and short SRS using other established risk factors. Researchers may also consider using the short SRS in place of the full SRS in future studies to reduce the overall amount of time participants spend on a research study.