How to Administer the ADI-R

The Autistic Diagnostic Interview-Revised, or ADI-R, is a comprehensive interview given to parents by a trained clinician to evaluate any child as long as the mental age of the child is above 2 years. The parent must be familiar with the child's development in order for the reliability of this test to be strong. The interview questions cover 8 areas of content.

Things You'll Need

• Thorough knowledge of child's behavior
• Trained clinician to administer test
• ADI-R kit

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Instructions

• 1

  Become familiar with your child's history of behavior. This test is only useful if the parent has a full medical, behavioral and social background for the child. If the child lives in the same house the familiarity will be there, but if the child spends most of his time at another house, then getting together to compare notes is warranted.

• 2

  Keep a journal of your child's behavior and conduct. This will be helpful during the test because it allows a review of the past behavior, which can help broaden the scope of the interview. The main purpose of this interview is to determine the severity of the condition, as well as what treatments to administer.

• 3

  Compare notes with your spouse, friends, teachers and family members. This discussion should focus on your child's different behaviors at the different locations he is accustomed to visiting. This should be a friendly discussion where everyone attending has your child's best interest in mind.

• 4

  Set aside 1 to 3 hours for testing. The test is composed of 93 items which cover 8 different topics such your child's background, early development, language acquisition or loss, current function of language, social development, interests and clinically relevant behaviors (i.e., such as aggression). Because of the broad scope of the test, the administration and scoring will take up to 3 hours to complete.

• 5

  Answer the questions as honestly as possible. The clinician's job is to best evaluate your child based on the answers given. There are no right or wrong answers, just factual ones. It is best for your child to have the most accurate results possible, so do not try to look for an answer that sounds right or "better." Just answer each question honestly and let the clinician do his job to treat your child.