Brief Report: Development and Initial Testing of a Questionnaire Version of the Environmental Rating Scale (ERS) for Assessment of Residential Programs for Individuals with Autism

Summary, in English

There is a lack of validated autism-specific outcome measures for large-scale evaluation of the effectiveness of psycho-educational programmes. To fill this gap the Environment Rating Scale (ERS) was adapted from an interview version to a staff-completed questionnaire version (ERS-Q). The ERS-Q was tested regarding data quality, validity, reliability and ease of understanding amongst 18 residential staff members. The ERS-Q and ERS showed comparable reliability (alpha = 0.89 and 0.93, respectively) and their correlation was 0.73. These observations support that the ERS interview can be adapted into a questionnaire without substantial loss of conceptual meaning. However, further evaluations in larger samples are needed to more firmly evaluate the measurement properties.

• Author: Marie Hübel; Peter Hagell; Bengt Sivberg
• Department/s: Department of Health Sciences
• Publishing year: 2008
• Language: English
• Pages: 1178-1183
• Publication/Series: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 6
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0493-y
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Nursing
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0162-3257