Social Skills Assessment in Young Children with Autism: A Comparison Evaluation of the SSRS and PKBS

Impairment in the development of reciprocal social interaction and other social skills is one of the defining characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). There is a need for assessment tools that will help guide social skills interventions and document outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential usefulness of two behavior rating scales with young children with ASD in an early childhood program. The results showed that the two social skills measures, the SSRS and PKBS, had adequate psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency, construct validity, convergent validity, and criterion validity with the AEPS, and were found to be predictive of how the tests would function when assessing young children with ASD in a natural setting. However, their usefulness in detecting social skills progress over time or intervention outcomes for young children with ASD may not be satisfactory.