Parent's Observations of Social Interactions

Overview

The Parent’s Observations of Social Interactions (POSI; The SWYC.org, 2015) is a seven-item screening instrument for autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The POSI was created as one part of a freely-available comprehensive screening instrument for children under 5 ½ years of age- The Survey of Well-being of Young Children (SWYC). The SWYC was developed at Tufts Medical Center and designed to be a “first-level” screening (i.e., an initial step in assessing children’s risk of developmental-behavioral issues). It is completed by parents or other caregivers in the context of pediatric primary care visits, but it can also be used in other settings (i.e., early child care, education, home visiting, and preschools). The entire instrument takes most parents 10 minutes or less to complete; the POSI takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Items for the POSI were selected by a team of experts who reviewed existing assessment instruments and relevant research literature. Questions were conceptually similar to the “critical items” of the M-CHAT with an additional question that asks for a child’s favorite activities. There are five response options for each question that vary based on the specific question, and the responses represent the severity of the behavior. The POSI (as well as other components of the SWYC, including the manual [Perrin, Sheldrick, Visco, & Mattern, 2016]) are available online. It has been translated into Spanish, Khmer, Burmese, Nepali, Portuguese, Haitian-Creole, and Arabic.

Autism Related Research