Abstract
BACKGROUND: As no scales are currently available to assess the social-emotional reciprocity (SER) between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their parents, we aimed to develop a questionnaire for this. METHODS: Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used for content validation. All stages of this study used purposive sampling to choose various groups of experts, mental health professionals, and parents of children with ASD to participate in the development, judgment-quantifying, and pretest stages. Data from 30 parents of children with ASD were gathered for the field test. RESULTS: Thirty items were retained after content validation. The proportion of consensus regarding the comprehensiveness of the entire questionnaire was 1.00. The scale-level content validity index (CVI) by averaging calculation method and universal agreement calculation method were 0.95 and 0.50, respectively. Following the pretest, a total of 23 questions, on a five-point scale, were retained. CONCLUSION: Given the significance of SER between children with ASD and their parents, mental health practitioners should use this questionnaire to understand it to maximize the efficacy of any intervention.