Mexican version of the Autism Behavior Checklist: validity and reliability

The Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC) evaluates symptoms in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) within a school setting. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of the ABC Mexican version.

Participants were children (n = 133, aged 2-17). All parents were interviewed with the autism diagnostic interview-revised (ADI-R) to confirm an ASD diagnosis and then answered the ABC checklist. The sample for the ABC test-retest analysis consisted of 19 parents with unaffected typically developing children between 2 and 17 years old.

Children and adolescents (n = 133) with a mean age of 6.9 years (standard deviation [SD] 3.7), 83.5% were males. The ABC total mean score was 69.3 (SD 25). The Internal consistency through the Cronbach Alfa coefficient was α = 0.83 < p = 0.001 for the 57 ABC items. The 10-day test-retest reliability showed a Pearson correlation coefficient of r = 0.98, p < 0.001. The Spearman correlation coefficients between the ABC subscales and the ADI-R ranged from (rs = 0.494) to (rs = 0.816). Criterion validity with a cutoff of 30 resulted in a sensitivity of 87% and a specificity of 37%. The best Kappa coefficient was 0.285 between the ABC and the ADI-R.

The Mexican ABC has good psychometric properties. Further studies should investigate its value in educational settings.