by James E. Gilliam, EdD
Purpose: Third Edition (GARS-3) is one of the most widely used instruments for the assessment of autism spectrum disorder in the world. The GARS-3 assists teachers, parents, and clinicians in identifying autism in individuals and estimating its severity.
Age: 3 through to 22 years
Admin: Individual
Time: 5-10 minutes
Qualification Level: B
The GARS-3 yields standard scores, percentile ranks, severity level, and probability of autism. Items on the GARS-3 are based on the 2013 diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder adopted by the APA.
Benefits
- Correlates with other well-known diagnostic tests for autism at magnitude large or very large.
- Includes all new validity studies that show test results are valid for a wide variety of subgroups, as well as for the general population.
- Accurately discriminates children with autism spectrum disorder from children without autism (sensitivity = .97, specificity = .97, ROC/AUC = .93).
- Internal consistency (content sampling) reliability coefficients for the subscales exceed .85 and the Autism Indexes exceed .93.
- Test-retest (time sampling) reliability coefficients exceed .80 for subscales and .90 for the Autism Indexes.
- Interrater reliability intraclass coefficients exceed .80 and .84 for the Autism Indexes.
Features
The instrument consists of 56 items grouped into six subscales: Restrictive/Repetitive Behaviors, Social Interaction, Social Communication, Emotional Responses, Cognitive Style, and Maladaptive Speech.
- Includes four new items.
- All six subscales have been empirically determined to be valid and sensitive for identification of children with ASD.
- An interpretation guide provides the examiner with an easy and efficient method for assessing the probability and severity of autism spectrum disorder.
- A diagnostic validation form is included to ensure test results meet DSM-5 criteria for autism spectrum disorder.
- Demographic characteristics of the normative sample are keyed to those reported by U.S. Bureau of the Census in 2011.
