Elsevier

Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Volume 5, Issue 1, January–March 2011, Pages 119-125
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders compared to typically developing controls on the Behavioral Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC-2)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2010.02.007Get rights and content

Abstract

As the Behavioral Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC-2) is often used to aid in diagnosis it is important to discern how children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) score on the BASC-2 compared to typically developing controls. This study compared scores of typically developing children and adolescents to those diagnosed with ASD on all subscales and composites of the BASC-2. Except for the aggression subscale, anxiety subscale, and the internalizing composite, the ASD group scored significantly higher on all clinical subscales and composites (i.e., hyperactivity, conduct problems, externalizing composite, depression, atypicality, withdrawal, attention problems, and the Behavioral Symptoms Index). However, the ASD group scored significantly lower on the adaptability composite and all subscales comprising this composite.

Section snippets

Participants

Primary caregivers served as informants and were recruited from schools, clinics, support groups, parent advocacy groups and community organizations from Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, California, Michigan, New York, and Connecticut. Participants consisted of 80 children and adolescents with ASD (n = 38), and typical development (n = 42). Since the number of participants in the comparison group (n = 42) is within 1.5 times the number of participants in the ASD group (n = 38), the number of

Power analysis

This study had enough power to obtain reliable results with a large effect size of .70. Multiple Mann–Whitney nonparametric tests were used because, overall, this sample was not normally distributed. As there is no agreed upon method in the literature for how to estimate the exact power obtained using nonparametric tests, a priori power analysis was conducted to estimate the sample size required to obtain an appropriate level of power. To determine the minimum level of participants this study

Statistical analysis

To assess differences in BASC-2 scores between typically developing and ASD children and adolescents, 18 separate Mann–Whitney exact tests were used, one for each subscale, composite, scale or index of the BASC-2. Mann–Whitney tests were used since, overall, the data for this study was not normally distributed (Field, 2005). Significance was calculated and reported using the exact rather than the asymptotic method because the exact method is more accurate (Field, 2005). A significance level of p

Results

A chi squared analysis revealed that the ASD and typically developing groups differed significantly in terms of gender, χ2 (1) = 10.83, p < .05, with a higher percentage of males in the ASD (78.9%) than the typically developing group (42.9%). This is consistent with research showing that more males evince ASD than females at about a three to one ratio (Nicholas et al., 2008). Thus, the gender distribution appears to match the distribution of the general population. Chi squared analysis also

Discussion

For the majority of subscales and composites comprising the BASC-2, children and adolescents with ASD and typically developing controls had discrepant scores. Consistent with hypothesizes and previous findings people with ASD had significantly greater difficulties in adaptive skills, such as functional communication, social skills, adaptability, activities of daily living, and leadership than typically developing controls (Matson et al., 2009a, Matson et al., 2009c). Significantly lower scores

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