Scoping review of behavioral coding measures used to evaluate parent responsiveness of children with autism or elevated risk of autism.

Researchers have studied how parents respond to their autistic children for over 50 years, but they've used many different ways to measure this. Some look at how parents react to what their child does, while others examine all interactions between parent and child. This review suggests creating a standard way to study parent responses so researchers can better compare studies and help families more effectively.

This scoping review examined methods used to measure parent responsiveness in families of children with autism or elevated autism risk over 50 years of research. The review identified varied approaches to coding parent behaviors, ranging from reactive responses to child actions to comprehensive parent-child interaction patterns. Authors noted significant methodological diversity across studies, with different systems capturing different aspects of responsiveness (timing, frequency, quality). The review proposes a standardized 'best practices' model for measuring parent responsiveness to enable better cross-study comparisons and inform evidence-based interventions for families.

The proposed standardized model could help clinicians select appropriate assessment tools for parent-child interactions. Improved measurement consistency may strengthen evidence for parent-mediated interventions and inform more targeted family support strategies in autism services.

This was a scoping review without systematic quality assessment. Sample size and specific methodological details of included studies are not reported. No empirical validation of the proposed standardized model is provided.

The topic of how parents react (e.g., how they talk and act) to their child with autism or elevated likelihood of autism, often called parent responsiveness, has been studied by researchers for over 50 years. Many methods for measuring behaviors around parent responsiveness have been created depending on what researchers were interested in discovering. For example, some include only the behaviors that the parent does/says in reacting to something the child does/says. Other systems look at all behaviors in a period of time between child and parent (e.g., who talked/acted first, how much the child or parent said/did).

The purpose of this article was to provide a summary of how and what researchers looked at around parent responsiveness, describe the strengths and barriers of these approaches, and suggest a "best practices" method of looking at parent responsiveness. The model suggested could make it more possible to look across studies to compare study methods and results. The model could be used in the future by researchers, clinicians, and policymakers to provide more effective services to children and their families.