Translation and validation of Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) for autism diagnosis in Brazil.

OBJECTIVE To translate into Brazilian Portuguese the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), an extremely useful diagnostic tool in autism. METHODS A case-control study was done to validate the ADI-R. After being translated, the interview was applied in a sample of 20 patients with autism and 20 patients with intellectual disability without autism, in order to obtain the initial psychometric properties. RESULTS The internal consistency was high, with a of Crombach of 0.967. The validity of criterion had sensitivity and specificity of 100%, having as a gold standard the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. The interview had high discriminant validity, with higher scores in the group of patients with autism, as well as high interobserver consistency, with median kappa of 0.824. CONCLUSION The final version of ADI-R had satisfactory psychometric characteristics, indicating good preliminary validation properties. The instrument needs to be applied in bigger samples in other areas of the country.