The Questionnaire on Behaviour and Social Communication (VSK):: An autism screening instrument for research and practice

The psychometric properties of the Questionnaire on Behaviour. and Social Communication (VSK), a German adaptation of the Autism Screening Questionnaire (ASQ), were investigated in this study. It is a 40-item parent-report instrument derived from the Autism Diagnostic interview-Revised (ADI-R) to screen for autism. In a sample of 83 subjects showing autism or autistic features the instrument had an internal consistency of alpha=.85, with items mostly being average in difficulty and all item-total correlations exceeding r=.40. Stability after an interval of 12-24 months in a small subsample of 17 subjects was r(ii)=.74. The convergence with thc ADI-R reached r=.66. The total score of the questionnaire discriminated highly significantly between 72 autistic subjects, 20 non-autistic/cognitive impaired subjects (IQ<85), 26 mixed-clinical subjects and 22 normal controls. A cut-off of 17 had a specificity of 99% and a sensitivity of 92%. Data suggest that the Questionnaire on Behaviour and Social Communication is a valuable tool to generate suspicion of autism For different clinical or research purposes.