# Measurement of Social Communication Outcomes in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

> **NIH NIH R21** · OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $156,000

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Social communication skills lay a foundation for the development of communicative competence and healthy
social relationships across the lifespan. Early-emerging and persistent social communication deficits are a
hallmark feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and therefore a frequent target for early intervention.
Unfortunately, accurate measurement of change following early intervention is currently hindered by a lack of
high-quality, easy-to-use outcome measures of social communication that are suitable for very young children
with ASD. To fill this gap, this R21 will focus on the development and initial validation of items for new parent-
and teacher-report questionnaires for measuring social communication outcomes in 2-6 year-olds with ASD.
The resulting assessment tools will be designed to measure social communication effectively across young
children with ASD who have varying developmental and language levels, making them useful for tracking
change as a result of early intervention.
This project will follow rigorous standards for assessment development as recommended by the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) and the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System
(PROMIS®), including (1) construct definition and validation via parent and teacher focus groups, expert input,
and review of existing measures, (2) selection and modification of candidate items with attention to issues of
construct coverage, readability, and understandability, (3) collection of preliminary data on test-retest and inter-
rater reliability (n=50 each), (4) collection of preliminary data on convergent and divergent validity (n=50), and
(5) examination of the factor structure of the items using data from a large group of parents (n=750) and
teachers (n=400) of children with and without ASD.
At the end of the project period, the investigators will have created sets of parent-report and teacher-report
items (i.e., item banks) that are prepared for further refinement and validation in a future study. In particular,
this item development strategy will prepare the item banks for further validation and use in a computerized
adaptive testing format. Computerized adaptive tests (CATs) use item response theory (IRT) models to
adaptively choose test items in real-time from a larger bank of available items, resulting in precise skill
estimates with administration of fewer test items, enabling measurement that is both accurate and efficient.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9990745
- **Project number:** 5R21DC016980-03
- **Recipient organization:** OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Katherine Meyer Walton
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $156,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-20 → 2022-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9990745

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9990745, Measurement of Social Communication Outcomes in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (5R21DC016980-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9990745. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*