Do We Need Multiple Informants When Assessing Autistic Traits? The Degree of Report Bias on Offspring, Self, and Spouse Ratings.
This study focused on the degree of report bias in assessing autistic traits. Both parents of 124 preschoolers completed the Social Communication Questionnaire and the Autism-spectrum Quotient. Acceptable agreement existed between mother and father reports of children's mean scores of autistic traits, but interrater reliability for rank-order correlations was only fair. No evidence was found for report bias regarding parent-offspring autistic traits. However, adult autistic ratings were strongly biased: spouse-ratings were higher than self-ratings, correlations were only fair when both parents reported about the same person, and resemblance was higher for reports from the same person than for spouses' separate self-reports. It is advisable to involve multiple informants when assessing autistic traits, and to use procedural and/or statistical remedies to control for report bias.
Department of Psychiatry, Nijmegen Centre for Evidence-Based Practice, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Esme.Moricke@radboudumc.nl.
Esmé
E
Möricke
Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.|Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Jan K
JK
Buitelaar
Department of Psychiatry, Nijmegen Centre for Evidence-Based Practice, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, P.O. Box 9101, 6500 HB, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.|Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Nanda N J
NNJ
Rommelse
D000328:Adult; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015982:Bias; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D057566:Self Report; D018454:Spouses / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Autistic trait; General population; Parent-offspring effect; Preschooler and parent; Report bias; Self- and spouse-report