Reliability of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Third Edition

The manual of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, recently released in its third edition, provides limited reliability information obtained from a sample composed primarily of typically developing individuals. The goal of this study was to evaluate the reliability of the Vineland-3 with the Vineland-II in a sample more similar in ability level to those in which the Vineland is commonly used. Both editions of the Vineland Comprehensive Parent Interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 106 parents/caregivers of individuals with neurodevelopmental disability, participating at two neurodevelopmental disorder research clinics. The concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) and mean differences were calculated for domain standard scores and subdomain v-scale scores. While the CCC values were in the acceptable range, Vineland-3 produced systematically lower scores than the Vineland-II, and these clinically significant differences tended to be larger for individuals with lower levels of ability. Thus, care must be taken in interpreting scores from the Vineland-3 relative to those obtained from the previous edition.