1Department of Child Healthcare, Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai 201102, China
2Department of Neurology, Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai 201102, China
3School of Public Health, Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150081, China
4Child Development Center, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510630, China
5Department of Psychiatry, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, China
6Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR 97239, USA
7Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai 201102, China

Abstract 

The reported prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been increasing rapidly in many parts of the world. However, data on its prevalence in China are largely missing. Here, we assessed the suitability of the modified Chinese version of a newly-developed ASD screening tool, the Modified Chinese Autism Spectrum Rating Scales (MC-ASRS) in screening for ASD in Chinese children aged 6–12 years, through comparison with the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) that has been widely used for ASD screening. We recruited the parents/caregivers of 1588 typically-developing children and 190 children with ASD aged 6–12 years to complete the MC-ASRS and SRS, and evaluated the validity of both scales in discriminating children with ASD from those developing typically. The results showed that MC-ASRS performed as well as SRS in sensitivity, specificity, and area-under-the-curve (both >0.95) in receiver operating characteristic analysis, with a fair false-negative rate. These results suggest that MC-ASRS is a promising tool for screening for children with ASD in the general Chinese population.

Keywords

Autism spectrum disorder, Screening accuracy, ROC analysis, Modified Chinese Autism Spectrum Rating Scale, Social Responsiveness Scale

[SpringerLink]