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

摘要

There is a lack of validated autism-specificoutcome measures for large-scale evaluation of the effec-tiveness of psycho-educational programmes. To fill thisgap the Environment Rating Scale (ERS) was adapted froman interview version to a staff-completed questionnaireversion (ERS-Q). The ERS-Q was tested regarding dataquality, validity, reliability and ease of understandingamongst 18 residential staff members. The ERS-Q andERS showed comparable reliability (alpha = 0.89 and0.93, respectively) and their correlation was 0.73. Theseobservations support that the ERS interview can be adaptedinto a questionnaire without substantial loss of conceptualmeaning. However, further evaluations in larger samplesare needed to more firmly evaluate the measurementproperties.