Validity and reliability of the social communication questionnaire Turkish version

Objective: There are many diagnostic instruments used in the assessment of the pervasive developmental disorders. The Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) is a valid and reliable scale that consists of 40 items which is used to differentiate children that have developmental handicaps who do not happen to have autistic syndrome from the ones that have autism. It is commonly used in the diagnosis and the screening of pervasive developmental disorders. The aim of this study is to examine the validity and reliability analysis of The Social Communication Questionnaire. First the translation and retranslation of The Social Communication Questionnaire were made to form the Turkish version. For the Turkish version; the internal concistency, test-retest concistency, content validity, discriminant validity for the end groups in the sample were evaluated. The comparison of the scale with Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), Autism Behavioural Checklist (ABC) and Clinical Global Impression?Severity of illness (CGI-SI) Comparisons was carried out.The appropriate cut-off point was found with ROC analysis.Method: The study is carried out with a sample that consists of 100 children and adolescents in total aged between 4-18 years old, of which 50 diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) and 50 diagnosed with mental retardation (MR) according to the DSM-IV-TR criteria. While the sociodemographic data form, The Social Communication Questionnaire, The Childhood Autism Rating Scale, Autism Behavioral Checklist (ABC) and Clinical Global Impression- Severity of illness (CGI-SI) were applied to the PDD cases, the sociodemographic data form and The Social Communication Questionnaire were administered to the control group. Evaluations were performed by a clinician. As for the test-retest measurement, 50 Pervasive Developmental Disorder cases were evaluated by the same clinician in 60+/- 10 day intervals.Results: The findings within our study reflect definite evidences for the validity and the reliability of SCQ.When the reliability results are examined, the Cronbach alpha coefficient for SCQ mean was found to be 0.80, for reciprocal social interaction domain 0.77, for communication domain 0.56, for restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior domain 0.69.To measure the test-retest consistency, 50 children were evaluated by the same clinician within 60+/-10 day intervals and Intraclass correlation coefficients-ICC was found between 0.87 and 0.96. The SCQ items used in the first and second interviews were shown to correlate significantly with each other.Within the validity scope, content validity, criterion validity and discriminant validity were examined. In the factor analysis that was made to assess content validity, 13 factors were found which identified 73.3% of the distribution with eigenvalue greater than 1. In concistency with the 3 dimensional structure of the scale 4 factors were taken under examination which accounted for 43.0% of the distribution with eigenvalue greater than 1.The cut-off point of the scale was 15.To assess the criterion validity, SCQ total scores were compared to the CARS total scores, the CGI scores and ABC total scores; the correlation coefficients for each one were found to be 0.35, 0.35 and 0.46, respectively.The scale was shown to have a good degree of discrimination (p<0.001) between the autism and the mental retardation group.Conclusion: The Social Communication Questionnaire carries the qualities of a standardized measurement instrument. It is considered that the Social Communication Questionnaire may contribute to the reasearches carried out in the pervasive developmental disorder field as well as to the clinical practice.