Technical Qualities of ASQ and ASQ:SE

For the Ages & Stages Questionnaires® (ASQ) 

These results support the overall usefulness of the ASQ to discriminate between children with developmental delays and those who appear to be developing typically.

• The validity of the ASQ system has been evaluated extensively. The total number of children in the original sample was 2,008; an additional 320 families participated in later studies of the 48– and 60–month questionnaires.
• The concurrent validity of the questionnaires (measured by comparing the percentage of agreement between the results of the parent-completed ASQs with the results of professionally administered standardized assessments) ranged from 76% for the 4–month ASQ to 91% for the 36–month ASQ, with 84% overall agreement.
• The sensitivity* of ASQ, or the ability of the ASQ system to correctly identify those children with delays, ranged from 51% for the 4–month ASQ to 90% for the 36–month ASQ, with 72% overall agreement.
• The specificity* of ASQ, or the ability of the ASQ system to correctly identify typically developing children, ranged from 81% for the 16–month ASQ to 92% for the 36–month ASQ, with 86% overall agreement.

*Given the complexity of measuring child development, the American Academy of Pediatrics considers high quality developmental screening tests to have sensitivities and specificities of 70% to 80%.

	For more detailed information, download the complete ASQ Technical Report.

For the Ages & Stages Questionnaires®: Social-Emotional (ASQ:SE)

Validity, reliability, and utility studies were conducted on the ASQ:SE between 1996 and 2001 in order to determine the psychometric properties of the screening instrument. Normative studies included 3,014 preschool-age children and their families, distributed across eight age intervals from 6 months through 60 months.

To measure the utility of the ASQ:SE, 731 parents completed utility questionnaires. More than 97% rated ASQ:SE items easy to understand and appropriate. Parents indicated that the ASQ:SE took little time to complete and helped them to think about social and emotional development in their children.

The results support the overall usefulness of the ASQ:SE to discriminate between children with social-emotional delays and those who appear to be developing typically in social-emotional areas.

• Internal consistency, measured by Cronbach’s coefficient alpha, ranged from 67%–91%, indicating strong relationships between questionnaire total scores and individual items.
• Test-retest reliability, measured as the agreement between two ASQ:SE questionnaires completed by parents at 1- to 3-week intervals, was 94%. These results suggest that ASQ:SE scores were stable across time intervals. 
• Concurrent validity, as reported in percentage agreement between ASQ:SE and concurrent measures, ranged from 81% to 95%, with an overall agreement of 93%.
• Sensitivity, or the ability of the screening tool to identify those children with social-emotional disabilities, ranged from 71% to 85%, with 78% overall sensitivity. 
• Specificity, or the ability of the screening tool to correctly identify those children without social-emotional delays, ranged from 90% to 98%, with 95% overall specificity.

	For more detailed information, see this table of ASQ:SE Psychometric Properties and download the ASQ:SE Technical Report.