Development and preliminary psychometric evaluation of the symptoms of autistic depression-parent scale

The current study preliminarily assessed the psychometric properties of the Symptoms of Autistic Depression-Parent (SAD-P) scale.

The SAD-P and the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) were administered to 196 parents of autistic and neurotypical youth.

A preliminary exploratory factor analysis (EFA) suggested a 1-factor model best suited the SAD-P based on factor loadings, parsimony, and interpretability. EFAs conducted separately for parents of neurotypical youth and autistic youth also supported a one-factor solution. The SAD-P demonstrated acceptable convergent validity (r =.65) with the CBCL Depression subscale and good discriminant validity (r =.42) with the Conduct Problems subscale.

Although this study is a preliminary step in scale development and more research is needed to validate the scale, the SAD-P shows promise as a preliminary measure of depressive symptoms in both autistic and neurotypical youth.