Abstract
The factor structure of the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) algorithm items was examined using exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) factor methods. The ADI-R was completed for 1,170 youths and adults (ages 2–46). Results of EFAs indicated strong support for two-factor structure, with social communication and stereotyped behavior factors. CFAs computed in a holdout sub-sample indicated roughly equal support for the above described two-factor model and a three factor model separating peer relationships and play from other social and communicative behaviors. Multi-group CFAs suggested that both two and three factor models showed good stability across age, with only slight changes in factor relationships. These findings indicate that the current ADI-R structure be revised to more accurately reflect the relationships between sub-scales.
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Notes
Non-verbal participants were excluded from analyses because these individuals do not have observations on the verbal communication items (C2 and C3). However, in the interests of examining the effects of this exclusion on findings, we imputed the most severe ratings for these individuals on these items and re-computed exploratory factor analyses. Results indicated a highly similar pattern of findings, with the exception that only two sub-scales (C3 and R1) showed significant loadings on the second factor and other repetitive behavior sub-scales loaded more heavily on the first factor. Thus, inclusion of these participants tends to shift the interpretation of the first factor from a social communication factor to a less specific autism severity factor.
Preliminary analyses indicated similar factor structure transforming and not transforming “3” codes to “2” codes. Therefore, we presented analyses using untransformed “3” codes.
Analyses were re-computed after applying transformations to sub-scales with limited range to attempt to normalize the distributions for these variables. Results of analyses for transformed data were highly consistent with raw data.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the resources provided by the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) Consortium and the participating AGRE families. The Autism Genetic Resource Exchange is a program of Cure Autism Now and is supported, in part, by grant MH64547 from the National Institute of Mental Health to Daniel H. Geschwind (PI).
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Frazier, T.W., Youngstrom, E.A., Kubu, C.S. et al. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 474–480 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0415-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0415-z