A Study of the Validity of and Cut-Off Scores for the Korean Version of Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: This study examined the reliability and validity of the Korean version of Asperger Syndrome Diagnostic Scale (K-ASDS), to calculate the cut-off score in the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. Further, we examined classification error rate when applying cut-off scores. METHODS: One hundred sixty-seven children participated in this study, including 46 with Asperger syndrome, 26 with PDD or PDD NOS, 43 with ADHD, and 52 normal children. RESULTS: An ANCOVA demonstrated no significant differences in the K-ASDS total score between the Asperger and the PDD & PDD NOS groups. However, these groups did show significantly higher scores than the ADHD and normal groups. Among the five subscales on the K-ASDS, the Asperger group obtained significantly higher scores on the language and cognition subscales than the PDD & PDD NOS groups. Two scales were found to be useful in distinguishing the Asperger group from the PDD & PDD NOS group through a discriminant analysis. According to an analysis of ROC curve, the cut-off score on the K-ASDS for the diagnosis of PDD including Asperger syndrome was 121. CONCLUSION: We discussed that K-ASDS has pretty limit.