The Matson Evaluation of Drug Side Effects (MEDS) is currently the best established and most researched measure of drug side effects in the intellectual disability (ID) literature. Initial research was conducted on its psychometric properties such as reliability and validity. More recent research studies have used the measure to determine the…

Caregivers of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) often describe the quality of the daily movements of these persons in terms of flexibility or stiffness. Objective outcome measures for flexibility and stiffness are muscle tone or level of spasticity. Two instruments used to grade muscle tone and spasticity are the…

Intellectual assessment is central to the process of diagnosing an intellectual disability and the assessment process needs to be valid and reliable. One fundamental aspect of validity is that of measurement invariance, i.e. that the assessment measures the same thing in different populations. There are reasons to believe that measurement…

The DSM-V-committee has recently published proposed diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders. We examine these criteria in some detail. We believe that the DSM-committee has overlooked a number of important issues, including social imagination, diagnosis in infancy and adulthood, and the possibility that girls and women with autism may…

This study reports on the validation of the language domain subtest of a developmental assessment scale for Cantonese Chinese preschool children. Three hundred and seventy eight multi-stage randomly selected children between 3;4 and 6;3 years of age were tested on the 104-item subtest. Fifty-four of these children, spreading across three age…

Given the negative influence of motor difficulties on people's quality of life their early identification seems to be crucial and consequently the information provided by a sound assessment tool is of great importance. The aim of this study was to examine the suitability of the MOT 4-6 (Zimmer & Volkamer, 1987) for use with preschoolers in…

Reliability and concurrent validity of the Behavior Problems Inventory (BPI-01; Rojahn et al., 2001) was examined in a sample of 130 community residing adults with mild to profound intellectual disabilities with high rates of behavior problems and concurrent mental health problems. The BPI-01 and the Inventory for Client and Agency Planning (ICAP;…

Background: In the last decades several instruments measuring anxiety in adults with intellectual disabilities have been developed. Aim: To give an overview of the characteristics and psychometric properties of self-report and informant-report instruments measuring anxiety in this group. Method: Systematic review of the literature. Results:…

The aim of this study was to adapt and evaluate the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ) for use in Chinese-speaking countries. A total of 1082 parents completed the DCDQ and 35 parents repeated it after 2 weeks for test-retest reliability. Two items were deleted after examination of test consistency. Cronbach's [alpha] for the…

The purpose of this study was to test the reliability (i.e. internal consistency and test-retest reliability) and construct validity (i.e. content validity, factor validity, measurement invariance, and latent mean invariance) of the Nutrition and Activity Knowledge Scale (NAKS) in a sample of French adolescents with mild to moderate Intellectual…

The parental report instrument is the most efficient developmental detection method and has shown high validity with professional assessment instruments. The reliability and validity of the Taiwan Birth Cohort Study (TBCS) 6-, 18- and 36-month scales have already been established. In this study, the reliability and validity of the 60-month scale…

The aim of this study was to examine the validation of the Hooper Visual Organization Test (HVOT) for use in children by testing for item fit, unidimensionality, item hierarchy, reliability, and screening capacity. A modified scoring system was devised for the HVOT so that children received some credit for being able to describe the function of…

Although often lacking "malice", aggression is fairly common in children with intellectual or developmental disability (I/DD). Despite this, there are no scales available that are appropriate for an in-depth analysis of aggressive behavior in this population. Such scales are needed for the study of aggressive behavior, which is a common target…

Evaluating pain in adults with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) is a challenge. The Non-Communicating Adults Pain Checklist (NCAPC) was recently developed from the Non-Communicating Children's Pain Checklist (NCCPC) and examined in a group of adults with IDD (N = 228) and found to hold satisfactory construct validity, internal…

The present study examines the validity of the Dutch Children's Communication Checklist (CCC) for children in kindergarten in a community sample, in order to assess the feasibility of using it as a screening instrument in the general population. Teachers completed the CCC for a representative sample of 1396 children at kindergarten level, taken…