Validity and Reliability Study of the Early Social Communication and Interaction Scale (ESCI) for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Difficulties in nonverbal social communication and interaction skills are one of the diagnostic criteria and distinctive features of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this study, it was aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Early Social Communication and Interaction (ESCI) scale, which was developed to assess nonverbal social communication and social interaction skills. Participants of the study consisted of 111 children with ASD aged 28.0-98.0 months. The ESCI scale was individually administered to the children, and interaction behaviors were analyzed by encoding them via video recordings. The validity of the scale was assessed by content and construct validity; reliability was assessed with internal Consistency-Cronbach Alpha and inter-observer reliability. As a result of the principal components analysis to examine the construct validity, the ESCI scale was found to have a one-factor structure which accounts for 72.51% of the variance. It has been determined that the factor loadings of the six measurements in the scale change between .72 and .90. It was found that the scores obtained from the measurements and the average of the total scores increased as the language level became complicated and the internal correlation coefficients between the measurements were significant and changed between .47 and .82. The Cronbach Alpha values for the reliability of the ESCI scale were found to be .87 in total and found to vary between .70 and .93 for the measurements. Findings show that nonverbal social communication and social interaction skills of children with ASD can be assessed with ESCI scale valid and reliable.