Screening for autism in young children with developmental delay: an evaluation of the developmental behaviour checklist: early screen.

The ability to identify children who require specialist assessment for the possibility of autism at as early an age as possible has become a growing area of research. A number of measures have been developed as potential screening tools for autism. The reliability and validity of one of these measures for screening for autism in young children with developmental problems was evaluated. The parents of 207 children aged 20-51 months completed the Developmental Checklist-Early Screen (DBC-ES), prior to their child undergoing assessment. Good interrater agreement and internal consistency was found, along with significant correlations with a clinician completed measure of autism symptomatology. High sensitivity was found, with lower specificity for the originally proposed 17-item screening tool and a five-item version.