AAC assessment for children with ASD (Lund et al., 2025)

Purpose: Previous research has shown that many speech-language pathologists (SLPs) lack confidence in conducting augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) evaluations. The AAC Clinical Assessment Project team developed a protocol to help guide SLPs to complete AAC assessments for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This article describes the creation and content validation of the protocol.

Method: Two studies were conducted. The first study developed the content of the protocol using information from previous research, observation of two AAC clinical specialists, and interviews with these specialists. In the second study, five specialists in AAC and ASD provided content validation by rating the appropriateness of each item in the protocol. Advisory group meetings were held with the specialists to discuss how to edit the protocol based on the survey results.

Results: The final protocol contains a description of each area to be assessed, a rationale for assessing it, and suggested methods to conduct the assessment.

Conclusions: The final version of the protocol has excellent content validity. Future research will evaluate the feasibility of using the protocol in clinical practice and whether using the protocol improves the clinical decision making of SLPs when planning AAC assessments.

Supplemental Material S1. Draft autism protocol.

Supplemental Material S2. Augmentative and alternative communication clinical assessment project (AAC CAP): Protocol for assessment of children with autism.

Lund, S. K., Quach, W., Weissling, K., & McKelvey, M. (2025). Augmentative and alternative communication assessment for children on the autism spectrum: Protocol development and content validation. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_LSHSS-23-00127