Self-Discovery
Tools

Clinical Information on Assessments

 

Autism Parenting Stress Index

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• Approximate time: 3-5 minutes to respond to 13 questions.

• It contains 13 common experiences that parents of children with ASD frequently encounter.

• The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of the initial version of the APSI was calculated α = 0.82 for children with ASD.

• Understanding your score: 

  • The index asks the parent to choose how stressful each item is for them using a five-point Liker t scale ranging from 0 (not stressful) to 4 (so stressful sometimes we feel we cannot cope).

  • The total score ranges from 0 to 52; higher scores indicate greater parenting stress.

  • Three domains: (a) core autism symptoms (questions: 1,2, 11, 12, 13), (b) co-morbid behaviors (questions: 3, 4, 5, 6), and (c) co-morbid physical issues (questions: 7, 8, 9, 10).

Parenting Scale

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• A measure of parenting in discipline situations for young children.

• This assessment was not specifically designed for neurodiverse children but may be helpful to identify helpful and unhelpful parenting styles. 

• Approximate time: 5-7 minutes to respond to 30 questions 

• Each question provides seven options, each representing different levels of a parenting aspect. Parents select the option that best reflects their parenting style over the past two months. 

• There are three factors on the Parenting Scale: Laxness (LX), Over-reactivity (OR), and Hostility (HS). There are several items that are not on a factor (NF).

• Understanding your score: 

  • All 30 items are scored on a 7 point scale, with low scores indicating functional parenting and high scores indicating dysfunctional parenting. ​

  • The recommended clinical cut-off scores are:

    • Mothers: Laxness 3.6, Over-reactivity 4.0, Hostility 2.4; and Total Score 3.2.

    • Fathers: Laxness 3.4, Over-reactivity 3.9, Hostility 3.5; and Total Score 3.2.

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Parent Stress Scale

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• Attempts to measure the levels of stress experienced by parents. Takes into account positive and negative aspects of parenting.

• Higher levels of parental stress related to:

  • Lower levels of parental sensitivity to the child

  • Poorer child behavior

  • Lower quality of parent – child relationship.

• Approximate time: 4-5 minutes to respond to 18 questions.

• Understanding your score: 

  • Overall possible scores on the scale range from 18 – 90. The higher the score , the higher the measured level of Parental stress

  • We recommend that you take the test before and after therapy to show the before and after results, hopefully indicating improvement.​

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