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. 2015 Oct;8(4):626-34.
doi: 10.1016/j.dhjo.2015.03.006. Epub 2015 Mar 20.

Factors associated with parental ratings of condition severity for children with autism spectrum disorder

Benjamin Zablotsky  1 , Matthew Bramlett  2 , Stephen J Blumberg  2
Affiliations

Factors associated with parental ratings of condition severity for children with autism spectrum disorder

Benjamin Zablotsky et al. Disabil Health J. 2015 Oct.

Abstract

Background: There is currently little consensus on how the severity of a child's autism spectrum disorder (ASD) should be measured, and yet despite the lack of a standardized definition, parents were readily able to answer a question asking them to describe the severity of his/her child's ASD in a national survey.

Objective: The current study examined factors associated with a parent's judgment of ASD severity, by identifying child and household characteristics that were associated with a parent's severity rating of his/her child's ASD, including child ASD symptomatology, child impact, and family impact.

Methods: Data came from the 2011 Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services ("Pathways"). A total of 967 parents in households with a child diagnosed with ASD between the ages of 6-17 were eligible for the current study. A measurement model was used to create latent factors of child symptoms, child impact, and family impact; multivariate logistic regression models examined the relationship between these latent factors and the parent's severity rating of their child's ASD.

Results: Children with higher family impact factor scores were more likely to have parents who rated their child's ASD as the most severe. Surprisingly, symptomatology and impact on the child were less predictive of severe ratings.

Conclusions: A parent's conceptualization of their child's ASD severity may vary more as a function of the impact of the child's condition on the family and less as a function of the symptoms exhibited by the child or the impact directly felt by the child.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorders; Developmental disability; National survey; Parents; Severity.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: All authors disclose no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Flow chart detailing steps in identifying analytic sample
Description: A flow chart designed to help readers understand eligibility factors for sample inclusion in the current study. Note: NS-CSHCN is the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs; ASD is autism spectrum disorder, ID is intellectual disability, DD is developmental delay
Figure 2
Figure 2. Results from the measurement model for symptoms, child impact, and family impact
Description: The measurement model generated to understand the relationship between factors and the loadings of individual questions on the factors themselves. Note: All values are standardized coefficients which can be interpreted as correlations. All pathways are significant at the <.001 level.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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