Cross-Cultural Generalizability of the First Year Inventory for Early ASD Screening in China

Abstract

The First Year Inventory (FYI) is a parent report screening measure, aimed at identifying the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 12-month-old infants. This study aimed to investigate the utility of FYI within the Chinese community and develop a short version, encompassing both a low-risk sample and a high-risk sample comprising infants with older siblings diagnosed with ASD. Parents of 53 high-risk (HR) infants and 519 low-risk (LR) infants, aged 11 to 13 months, were recruited. After comparing response distributions across Chinese and American samples, a new factorial structure was developed according to the factor analyses. The construct validity and internal consistency of the two FYI versions were examined. The implementation of FYI in the HR sample was also assessed. Noteworthy disparities in response distribution were observed between the Chinese and American samples. Both FYI 2.0 and the FYI short version demonstrated moderate construct validity and internal consistency, with the FYI short version exhibiting better predictive ability in the HR sample. Significant lower risk scores was observed in the HR sample compared to the LR sample. These findings substantiate the applicability and validity of the Chinese short version of FYI. Future research should include follow-up assessments with the Chinese sample to evaluate cutoff scores, considering the cutoff between sensitivity and specificity and the sample?s characteristics.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Cross-cultural Generalizability; Early Infant Screening; First year Inventory; High-risk Infants.