Abstract

This paper provides initial validation of the Dimensional Assessment of Restricted and Repetitive Behaviors (DARB)-a new parent-report measure designed to capture the full range of key of restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) subdomains.Parents of 1892 children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (M= 10.81 years; SD= 4.14) recruited from the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge (SPARK) research match completed the DARB, several existing RRB instruments, and measures of social and communication impairments and anxiety. A subsample of 450 parents completed the DARB after two weeks to evaluate test-retest stability.Exploratory graph analysis (EGA) conducted in the exploratory subsample identified eight dimensions that were aligned with our hypothesized RRB subdomains: repetitive sensory motor behaviors (RSMB), insistence on sameness (IS), restricted interests (RI), unusual interests (UI), sensory sensitivity (SS), self-injurious behaviors (SIB), obsessions and compulsive behaviors (OCB) and repetitive language (RL). The confirmatory application of the exploratory structural equation modeling conducted in the confirmatory subsample showed that the derived factor structure had a good fit to the data. Derived factors had excellent reliability, convergent and divergent validity, very strong test-retest stability, and showed a distinct pattern of associations with key demographic cognitive and clinical correlates.DARB will be useful in a variety of research and clinical contexts considering the prominence and clinical impact of RRB in ASD. The strong preliminary evidence indicates that the new scale is comprehensive and captures a wide range of distinct RRB subdomains not simultaneously captured by any of the existing instruments.

View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jaac.2022.07.863

View details for PubMedID 36526162