Administration of the Autism Behavior Checklist: agreement between parents and professionals' observations in two intervention contexts

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To determine the agreement between responses on the Autism Behavior Checklist by mothers and healthcare professionals. METHOD: Twenty-three mothers of children from the autism spectrum (DSM-IV-TR, 2002) were interviewed. The children were part of an educational program of the Autistic Friends Association-SP. The healthcare professionals in charge of the children at the institution filled out a questionnaire regarding the method for observing behavior. For comparison purposes, an additional 15 mothers of children from the autism spectrum were interviewed at the speech therapy clinic of Universidade Federal de São Paulo, and the speech therapists responsible for the children filled out the questionnaire on the observation method. The Kappa index was employed to obtain the frequency of agreement between mothers and healthcare professionals' observations on the overall Autism Behavior Checklist, as well as its individual components. The Student's t-test was used to assess differences or similarities between the Kappa results. RESULTS: The agreement index was low for the total score, with a statistically significant difference between both groups (p < 0.001). Agreement was also low for each Autism Behavior Checklist components, but there was greater agreement in the group treated at the public service in the Language, Body and Use of Objects components (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: There was disagreement between the observations in both intervention contexts, but agreement was better at the public service than at Autistic Friends Association.