A Method for Universal Screening of Elementary School Students: Development of the Social Challenges Screening Questionnaire

Abstract

Schools regularly screen students for hearing and vision impairments because they present impediments to academic progress.For the same reason, schools should consider adding a universal screening for social challenges, which may also impede the learning process. This study reports on the development of the Social Challenges Screening Questionnaire (SCSQ), an efficient teacherreport screening questionnaire that identifies students with challenges who may benefit from a psychological evaluation. Further, the questionnaire may help identify students with Autism Spectrum Disorder who were previously undiagnosed. The SCSQ was administered to 549 general education students in the third and fourth grades. Internal consistency was .85. A smaller sample of students (n = 50) was selected for additional follow up assessment using the Social Responsiveness Questionnaire, Second Edition. Scores on the two instruments were strongly correlated (r = .87, p < .01), and sensitivity (.94) and specificity (.88) indicate the SCSQ can efficiently detect students with social challenges in need of a formal evaluation.

Parent-reported early symptoms of autism spectrum disorder in children without intellectual disability who were diagnosed at school age

“…In fact, screening questionnaires exist specifically for this age range (e.g. Bishop et al, 2017; Smith et al, 2015). Five symptoms were reported to be present historically in all of the late-diagnosed children, but the number of girls in this study was small, as is common in community-based samples (Sacrey et al, 2017).…”

“…Although effective screening tools have been developed to query age-appropriate social behaviors in school-age children (e.g. Ehlers et al, 1999; Smith et al, 2015), universal screening for ASD in students has not been widely adopted. If children are only evaluated for ASD after a functional impairment is observed at school, their development might already be significantly delayed and behavioral issues could emerge.…”