Background Social communication is important for adolescents who transition from school to post-school settings. Individuals with Intellectual Disability (ID) often demonstrate a lack of adaptive skills that may interfere with their transition to the workplace or post-school settings. Therefore, it is important for clinicians to select appropriate social communication assessments to evaluate people with ID. My question is: What are the most effective tests to evaluate social communication of individuals with Intellectual Disabilities. Clinicians who use Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) identify assessments based on the adequacy of their measurement properties. Due to the lack of clarity defining adequate measurement properties, the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) can be used to improve test selection in clinical practice. COSMIN provides guidelines to rate measurement properties such as reliability and validity. Methods Five assessments were pulled from a broader project that conducted a systematic review to rate measurement properties with the COSMIN standards. Construct validity was used to compare the five assessments. Construct validity was evaluated by evaluating whether tests met or failed to meet hypotheses generated regarding how well they correlated with like-tests or discriminative affected or unaffected groups. Results The assessments were given a methodological rating of very good, adequate, doubtful, inadequate, or not applicable and a COSMIN rating of +, ﹣, or ?. CAPS: very good, +; CBSP: doubtful, +; TICE: doubtful, +; SLDT: very good, +; CELF-5: very good, +. While tests aligned with our hypotheses, methodological ratings varied due to poor transparency and other issues. Conclusion The COSMIN standards support EBP in test selection by defining terminology based on a group consensus and providing common standards for rating measurement properties. There are inconsistencies between authors’ discussion of their test’s content validity and the COSMIN ratings due to absence of unbiased peer review.
Author: Caitlyn Maskalunas
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Trace Poll, Speech Pathology and Audiology
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