Sensitivity and specificity of the autism diagnostic inventory-telephone screening in Spanish.
We report on the development in Argentina of a screening questionnaire for autism administered over the telephone. The Autism Diagnostic Inventory-Telephone Screening in Spanish (ADI-TSS) is based on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), keeping its structure but including fewer questions, which were rephrased to assess them over the telephone. The ADI-TSS went through different versions, with each modification gaining in reliability. The final version of the ADI-TSS could be assessed in 20 to 40 minutes and demonstrated a high validity (using the ADI-R as the diagnostic gold-standard), high intrarater and interrater reliability (as measured with intraclass correlations), and high internal consistency (as measured with Cronbach's alpha). The validity of the ADI-TSS remained high when used by a health-related professional without formal training in the assessment of autistic patients. We believe the ADI-TSS is useful in field research studies as a screening instrument for patients with a potential diagnosis of autism, although future validation studies should include larger samples.
Division of Child Psychiatry, Department of Neuropsychiatry, Raúl Carrea Institute of Neurological Research-FLENI, Buenos Aires, Argentina. dvrancic@fleni.org.ar
Daniela
D
Vrancic
Valeria
V
Nanclares
Delfina
D
Soares
Analia
A
Kulesz
Claudia
C
Mordzinski
Christian
C
Plebst
Sergio
S
Starkstein
D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D002648:Child; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires