Appropriate for use with children ages 4-18 years, the SRS is a 65-item rating scale that measures

the severity of autism spectrum symptoms as they occur in natural social settings. Completed by a parent or a teacher in just 15 to 20 minutes, the SRS provides a clear picture of a child's social impairments, assessing social awareness, social information processing, capacity for reciprocal social communication, social anxiety/avoidance, and autistic preoccupations and traits. Both the Parent and Teacher Form use the convenient AutoScore format. Sensitive and reliable across a wide range of symptom severity, the SRS can be used as a screener in clinical or educational settings, as an aid to clinical diagnosis, or as a measure of response to intervention (RTI). SRS scores are particularly helpful in identifying autism, Asperger's disorder, pervasive developmental disordernot otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), and schizoid personality disorder of childhood. In addition, the scale can alert clinicians to subthreshold autistic symptoms that may be present in children who have a wide variety of psychological problems. The SRS provides a quantitative score for autistic social impairment that enables comparisons across settings and against norms established for different raters, making it helpful in qualifying a child for mental health or special education services. Recent research indicates that autism is best conceptualized as a spectrum condition rather than an all-or-nothing diagnosis. Because the SRS measures impairment on a quantitative scale across a wide range of severity rather than providing a yes-or-no decision about the presence of a symptom or given disorderand because even mild degrees of impairment can have significant adverse effects on social functioningthe SRS is ideal for capturing the nuances of social impairment that are characteristic of autism spectrum conditions. For the most common (and often the most subtle) autism spectrum conditions, there is no other instrument that is able to measure the severity of social impairment in a reliable manner. In addition to a Total Score reflecting severity of social deficits in the autism spectrum, the SRS generates scores for five Treatment Subscales: Social Awareness, Social Cognition, Social Communication, Social Motivation, and Autistic Mannerisms. Although scores from these subscales are not used for screening or diagnosis, they are useful in designing and evaluating treatment programs.

SRS treatment subscale

Social Awareness

Description
The ability to pick up on social cues. Items in this category represent the sensory aspects of reciprocal social behavior. The ability to interpret social cues after they are recognized. Items in this category represent the cognitiveinterpretive aspects of reciprocal social behavior. Includes expressive social communication. Items in this category represent the motoric aspects of reciprocal social behavior. The extent to which the individual is generally motivated to engage in socialinterpersonal behavior. Items in this category include elements of social anxiety, inhibition, and empathic orientation. Includes stereotypical behaviors or highly restricted interests that are characteristic of autism.

Social Cognition

Social Communication

Social Motivation

Autistic Mannerisms

Standardization, Reliability, and Validity

The SRS standardization sample was composed of more than 1,600 children from the general population. Norms are separated by rater (i.e., parent, teacher) and by the rated child's gender.

Internal consistency is high for normative parent ratings, normative teacher ratings, and clinical ratings, ranging from .93 to .97 for all groups. Test-retest stability ranged from .77 to .85 for parent ratings; mother-father, mother-teacher, and father-teacher interrater reliabilities were .91, .82, and .75, respectively. Validity was examined for the SRS in terms of discriminant validity, concurrent validity, structural validation, and factor analytic studies.