Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (2024)

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Area of Assessment

Communication
Activities of Daily Living
Social Relationships
Developmental

Assessment Type

Other

Administration Mode

Paper & Pencil

Cost

Not Free

Cost Description

Manual Scoring Kit starting at $228
-Vineland-3 Manual
-One package (5) each of 7 forms

Web-based Administration Kits starting at $206
-Vineland-3 Domain Level Reports Q-Global Kit
-1-Year Subscription to online scoring
-One package (25) of each of 7 English forms

Comprehensive and Complete Kits are also available at a higher cost

• Items in each domain are placed in developmental order and rated on a 0, 1, 2, scale:
  -2 (Behavior is usually or habitually performed)
  -1 (sometimes or partly performed)
  -0 (never performed)
  A few items are rated 2 for Yes or 0 for No
• Survey Interview Form
  ○Comprehensive and Domain Levels
  ○Semi-structured interview technique to elicit information about the examinee’s adaptive functioning from a parent or caregiver (brochure)
  
• Parent/Caregiver Rating Form
  ○Age ranges covered: birth-90+
  ○Comprehensive & Domain Levels
  ○Asks about home and family-life behavior using a questionnaire format
  
• Teacher Rating Form
  ○Age ranges covered: 3-21
  ○Comprehensive and Domain Levels
  ○Collects a teacher’s experience with adaptive behavior in school, preschool, or in a structured daycare setting
• Scores can be entered directly into Q-Global software or manually entered later. Scoring can also be done manually. scoring

Number of Items

Survey Interview Form
-Comprehensive = 502 items
-Domain = 195 items

Parent/Caregiver Rating Form
-Comprehensive = 502 items
-Domain = 180 items

Teacher Rating Form
-Comprehensive = 333 items
-Domain = 149 items

Required Training

Training Course

ICF Domain

Activity
Participation

Measurement Domain

Activities of Daily Living
Cognition
Motor

Typically Developing Children: (Sparrow, Balla, & Cicchetti, 1984; n = 3,000; age range = 0-18 years)

SEM for Adaptive Behavior Composite (ABC) of entire group:

• VABS I Survey Form: 3.6
• VABS I Expanded Form: 2.6

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): (Chatham et al., 2018; n = 9067, 84% male; total observations = 10,326; mean age = 8.22, age range of 1-16-55.74 years; mean IQ = 83.56, range: 7-167)

• MCID = 2–3.75 score units (p-value not reported for distribution based methods and anchor based methods)

Autism Spectrum Disorder: (Carter et al., 1998; n = 684, 72.66% male; mean age = 11.17 (7.83) years, age range of 2 to 59 years)

• Mean Standard Scores for ASD sample under 10 years of age, Not mute: Communication = 59.74, Daily Living = 58.54, Socialization = 59.14.
• Mean Standard Scores for ASD sample under 10 years of age, mute: Communication = 43.31, Daily Living = 33.25, Socialization = 35.08.
• Mean Standard Scores for ASD sample 10 years of age and older, not mute: Communication = 47.26, Daily Living = 54.16, Socialization = 56.73.
• Mean Standard Scores for ASD sample 10 years of age and older, mute: Communication = 32.82, Daily Living = 29.94, Socialization = 33.57

  • Supplemental Norm Group Percentile Ranks corresponding to Sum of Raw Scores (3 domains: communication, daily living, socialization) for Autism Special Population Sample

    Supplementary Norm Group Percentile Rank	Under 10 years, Not Mute (n = 141)	Under 10 years, Mute (n = 252)	10 years or older, Not Mute (n = 171)	10 years of older, Mute (n = 98)
    99	311-Up	303-Up	404-Up	348-Up
    98	293-310	294-302	396-403	345-347
    95	251-292	258-293	368-395	327-344
    90	228-250	227-257	347-367	304-326
    85	212-227	201-226	330-346	277-303
    80	199-211	177-200	314-329	249-276
    75	188-198	157-176	300-313	222-248
    70	178-187	139-156	286-299	196-212
    65	170-177	124-138	272-185	172-195
    60	162-169	111-123	259-271	152-171
    55	154-161	99-110	246-258	134-151
    50	146-153	89-98	234-245	120-133
    45	139-145	80-88	221-233	108-119
    40	132-138	73-79	209-220	99-107
    35	125-131	66-72	196-208	92-98
    30	118-124	61-65	183-195	86-91
    25	110-117	56-60	170-182	81-85
    20	102-109	52-55	156-169	78-80
    15	93-101	48-51	141-155	76-77
    10	82-92	45-47	124-140	74-75
    5	65-81	43-44	101-123	73
    2	59-64	42	95-100	72
    1	0-58	0-41	0-94	0-71

Typically Developing Children: (Sparrow et al., 1984)

• Mean (SD) Adaptive Behavioral Composite Score for the VABS I Survey Form =100.1 (9.0)

  • Mean Adaptive Behavioral Composite Score for the VABS I Survey Form per Age Group

    Age (years-months)	Mean ABC Score	SD
    0-0--0-11	105.4	9.0
    1-0--1-11	98.4	12.6
    2-0--2-11	101.9	15.2
    3-0--3-11	101.0	15.2
    4-0--4-11	98.0	15.0
    5-0--5-11	95.2	13.2
    6-0--6-11	100.8	16.9
    7-0--7-11	100.1	17.5
    8-0--8-11	102.1	15.7
    9-0--9-11	100.9	17.9
    10-0--10-11	101.0	15.6
    11-0--11-11	98.5	16.4
    12-0--13-11	99.7	15.8
    14-0--15-11	100.8	14.4
    16-0--18-11	98.0	15.8

Typically Developing Children (Sparrow et al., 1984; n = 484)

• Excellent test-retest reliability for the VABS I Survey Form (ICC = 0.88)
  • Communication (ICC = .86)
  • Daily Living Skills (ICC = .85)
  • Socialization (ICC = .81)
  • Motor Skills (ICC = .81)

Typically Developing Children (Sparrow et al., 1984)

• Adequate interrater reliability for the VABS I Survey Form (ICC = 0.74)
  • Communication (ICC = .75)
  • Daily Living Skills (ICC = .62)
  • Socialization (ICC = .62)
  • Motor Skills (ICC = .78)

Typically Developing Children (Sparrow et al., 1984)

• Excellent internal consistency for the VABS I Survey Form (split-half reliability coefficient =.94)
  • Communication (r = .89)
  • Daily Living Skills (r = .90)
  • Socialization (r = .86)
  • Motor Skills (r = .83)

Preschool-age: (Goldberg, 2009; n=120; Mean Age= 4.9 (1.1); Vietnamese sample)

Using Adapted Vietnamese Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales compared to Original VABS.

• Excellent Internal Consistency Reliability:
  • Expressive (⍺=.88)
  • Written (⍺=.89)
  • Personal (⍺=.90)
  • Domestic (⍺=.82)
  • Community (⍺=.87)
  • Interpersonal Relationships (⍺=.81)
  • Coping Skills (⍺=.87)
  • Fine (motor skills) (⍺=.83)
  • Communication domain (⍺=.93)
  • Daily Living Skills domain (⍺=.95)
  • Socialization domain (⍺=.93)
  • Motor skills domain (⍺=.89)
• Adequate Internal Consistency Reliability
  • Play and leisure time (⍺=.76)
  • Gross (motor skills) (⍺=.78)
• Poor Internal Consistency Reliability
  • Receptive (⍺=.27)

Concurrent validity:

Typically Developing Children (Sparrow et al., 1984)

• Poor to adequate correlations of the VABS I Survey Form with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (r = .28)
  • Communication (r = .37)
  • Daily Living Skills (r = .12)
  • Socialization (r = .21)
  • Motor Skills (r = .17)
• Adequate correlations of the VABS I Survey Form with the Vineland Social Maturity Scale (r = .55)

Preschool-age: (Goldberg et al., 2009)

• Large change between non-disabled and disabled groups scores (adaptive behavior cohen’s d=2.70).
  • Domain effect sizes ranged from 0.85 - 3.05.

Pediatric Autism Spectrum Disorder: (Balboni et al., 2016; n = 87, Mean Age = 4 years, 5 months (11 months); Autism severity ADOS social affect calibrated score 5.09 (1.04); Cognitive Level: Leiter-R standard score 70.13 (25.13); Linguistic level: Peabody-R raw score 15.03 (19.64); Italian sample)

• Excellent test-retest reliability:
  • Communication (ICC = .94)
  • Daily Living Skills (ICC=.94)
  • Socialization (ICC=.91)

Children and Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: (de Bildt, Kraijer, Sytema & Minderaa, 2005; n = 826; Mean Age = 11.31 (3.65); Severity of Mild to Profound)

• Excellent: Cronbach's alpha range from 0.97-0.99

Concurrent validity

Children and Teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder: (Perry & Factor, 1989; n =15 children and teens, Mean age=12.8 (2.7) years; VABS first version, Classroom Edition)

• Excellent Concurrent Validity, raw scores of the three VABS domains are highly correlated with the Adaptive Behavior Scale- School Edition Total Part I Raw Scores ( correlation coefficient= .77 to .85)

Predictive validity:

Pediatric Autism Spectrum Disorder: (Balboni et al., 2016)

• Adequate classification capacity of the 4 item subset of the VABS (Playing, Following Instruction, Beginning to Talk, and Interactive Speech) to correctly classify 72% of children with ASD. (Wilks’ λ = 0.75; χ2 [4]= 13.94; p = .007, sensitivity was 74% and specificity was 57%)
• Adequate classification capacity of the 4 item subset of the VABS (Playing, Following Instruction, Beginning to Talk, and Speech Skills) to correctly classify 75% of children with ASD. (Wilks’ λ = 0.75; χ2 [4]= 13.94; p = .007, sensitivity was 80% and specificity was 64%) These 4 items had medium and small size effect, statistically significant correlations with the ADOS Social Affect scale (correlation coefficients= -0.27- -0.37, p ≤ .05)
• Significantly lower mean z-scores in the Communication domain for the ASD group compared to the NDD group. (ASD = -4.53 (3.37), NDD = -2.33 (2.69))
• Medium size-effect in the domain of Communication (t(50) = 2.47, p = .017, Cohen’s d = 0.70,)
• Large differences in subdomains the ASD group obtained significantly lower scores compared to other neurodevelopmental disorders in Receptive (t(50) = 3.18, p = .002, Cohen’s d = 0.91), Expressive (t(50) = 2.95, p = .005, Cohen’s d = 0.84), and Play and Leisure Time (t(25.635) = 2.47, p = .020, Cohen’s d = 0.81) subdomains.

Children with Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD): (Balboni et al. 2016; n = 20, Mean Age = 4 years, 6 months (10-11 months); Autism severity ADOS social affect calibrated score 2.53 (1.07); Cognitive Level: Leiter-R standard score 89.70 (24.59); Linguistic level: Peabody-R raw score 26.95 (21.87); Italian sample)

• Adequate predictive validity of the 4 items of the VABS (Playing, Following Instruction, Beginning to Talk, and Interactive Speech) to correctly classify 60% of children with other NDD. (Wilks’ λ = 0.75; χ2 [4]= 13.94; p = .007)

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Specific Learning Disability (SLD): (Balboni et al., 2017; n = 170, Age range 5-14 years; Italian sample)

• Adequate classification capacity of the 4 item subset of the VABS (Listening and attending, Expressing complex ideas, Social communication, and Following instructions) to correctly classify 87.5% of children with ADHD. (Wilks’ λ = 0.43; χ2 [4]= 37.37; p ＜ 0.001, sensitivity and specificity were both 87.5%) (Balboni et al., 2017).
• Adequate classification capacity of the 3 item subset of the VABS (Reading skills, Writing skills, and Times and dates) to correctly classify 67.7% of children with SLD. (Wilks’ λ = 0.84; χ2[4] = 20.90; p < 0.001, sensitivity was 70.2% and specificity was 67.7%) (Balboni et al., 2017).

Convergent Validity:

Children and Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: (de Bildt et al., 2005)

• Excellent: convergent validity of the VABS when compared to scores on the SRZ subscales (r = .93 in the total sample, .89 in the moderate/severe subgroup)

Children and Teens with Autism Spectrum Disorder: (Perry & Factor, 1989)

• Excellent correlations with IQ and MA (correlation coefficient = 0.76 and .70 respectively)

Discriminant validity:

Children and Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: (de Bildt et al., 2005)

• Poor: discriminant validity of the VABS when compared to IQ scores (r = .65 for Profound Severity)
• Adequate to excellent: discriminant validity when compared to IQ scores (r = .36 for Mild Severity, r = .18 for Moderate Severity)
• Excellent: discriminant validity when compared to Child Behavior Checklist and Developmental Behavior Checklist, both of which measure problem behavior (r = -.18 and -.30 respectively)
• Adequate: discriminant validity when compared to The Scale of Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Mentally Retarded Persons, the Autism Behavior Checklist, the Autism Diagnostic Interview, and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, all of which measure PDD behavior (r =-.36, -.53, -.38, and -.49 respectively)

Discriminant validity:

Intellectual Disability and Associated Disorder: (Balboni, Pedrabissi, Molteni & Villa, 2001; n = 226; Mean Age = 17.76 (12.38); Severity of Mild to Profound mental retardation; Italian-speaking sample)

• VABS Expanded Form domains showed “good” discriminant validity between each area of adaptive behavior (i.e., motor, communication, social). Researchers used multivariate analysis to compare scores of participants with ID and an associated motor, communication, or social behavior disorder to scores of a matched control participant with only ID. Experimental participants were found to have significantly lower scores compared to matched participants only in the scales of adaptive behavior related to their associated disorder (motor: p﹤.001, communication: p﹤.001, social behavior: p = .01). No other measure of discriminant validity was reported.