About#

The Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) is a screening tool completed by parents to evaluate communication skills and social functioning in children suspected of having autism spectrum disorders. Suitable for children aged 4 years and older, it assesses aspects such as reciprocal social interaction, language use, play, and repetitive behaviors. The SCQ is useful in identifying potential autism indicators, facilitating large-scale screenings, and providing preliminary data for further diagnostic evaluations, offering a standardized measure of social communication abilities. The SCQ will be collected at follow-up timepoints only, as its items fully overlap with the ADI-R.

Administration

Administration type	Parent Survey
Setting	{}
Duration	10 min
Respondent	Parent
Visits	Visits 1-3
Ages	2-18 years

Scoring procedures

Total items	40
Response scale	Dichotomous (0, 1)
Score types	Total score (sum of all subscores)
Missingness handling	Complete responses required; no summary score is computed if any item is missing or invalid.
Reverse-coded items	Items 2, 9, 20–25, 28, 29, 31, 33, 35, 39, 40
Cutoff	15 (Berument et. al, 1999)
Excluded from scoring	Items 5, 12, 13, 17–19, 26, 27, 30, 32, 34, 36–38
Branching logic	If Item 1 = Yes: Calculate total score from items 2–40 If Item 1 = No: Calculate total score from items 8–40

Resources#