Validation of the short form of the parent reaction to autism diagnosis scale (PRADS-SF) as a measure of resolution

The purpose of this study was to establish a reliable and valid short form of the Parent Reaction to Autism Diagnosis Scale (PRADS), as well as provide a generalized short form of parent resolution called the Parent Reaction to Diagnosis Scale (PRDS). This was accomplished by using archival data which Brewer (2013) collected and analyzed to validate the original PRADS scale. The PRADS is comprised of 98 items, and this project involved creating and validating a shortened form to aid in ease of use. Resolution requires a cognitive and emotional reorganization following a large, unexpected life event. Pianta and Marvin (1992) created a qualitative measurement tool, the Reaction to Diagnosis Interview (RDI) to ask parents about their reactions to receiving a serious diagnosis about their child, and their coding placed each parent into resolved or unresolved categories and subcategories based on their responses to the questions. Brewer (2013) created and validated a quantitative measurement tool, in which 137 parents rated the degree to which they experienced each of a large set of parent statements. These statements were balanced in representing the content of each of the RDI categories and subcategories, and resulted in separate quantitative scales for each domain. Brewer also related each of the scales to the additional data she collected, including demographics, adult relationships, child-parent relationships, parenting self-efficacy, and emotion measures. Statistical analyses in the current study confirmed that the short-form scales performed similarly to the long-form scales, in showing high internal reliability, high correlations between corresponding short-form and long-form scale scores, similar patterns of differences in means across the scales, and similar patterns of significant and non-significant correlations between the scales and each of the other measured variables. The resulting short form consists of 15 domain scales, with seven Resolved domains, seven Unresolved domains, and one independent positive distortions domain. The short form has 60 items for parents to rate, with four items in each of the 15 domain scales. These scales provide a valuable measurement tool for objectively and quickly assessing parents' areas of resolved strengths and areas of unresolved difficulties. It can be used as a measure by future researchers, and it can be used by service providers to identify specific supports of benefit to individual parents as they raise a child with autism.