The KAQ-I And The Knowledge Of Autism Questionnaire
Instruments. Using semi-structured interview design, the present study developed a questionnaire, the Knowledge of Autism Questionnaire – Interview (KAQ-I, see Appendix B), for the purpose of exploring Year 4 to Year 6 students’ knowledge of autism. The KAQ-I consists of 12 parts, developed on the basis of survey questionnaires from several previous studies, including the Concept of Illness Protocol in Bibace and Walsh (1980), which was originally designed to measure development of children’s perceptions of illness but later adapted to develop the Concepts of Autism Protocol in Glassberg (2000) to measure siblings’ perspectives on autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
In the making of the KAQ-I, what was involved in the study by Campbell and Barger
(2011) was also considered, with their Knowledge of Autism Questionnaire (KAQ). The KAQ is a 10-item ‘True’ or ‘False’ scale designed to measure Year 6 to Year 8 students’ knowledge of cause, course, symptoms, and communicability (contagiousness) of autism. In this study, the wording of the previous questionnaire was adjusted with age-appropriate language for target participant group (Years 4 to 6), and was written in spoken language, as participants were interviewed instead of answering the survey questions. In addition, instead of asking participants to answer ‘True’ or ‘False’ to a given statement that targets a specific area of knowledge, the KAQ-I was designed to ask students open-ended questions with prompts, in a similar way to what occurred in the study by Glassberg (2000). Two questions were added (i.e., Questions 4 and 5) to attain data about participants’ exposure to the term ‘autism’ and whether participants had experience with a person with autism. The question “What is autism?” was adapted from Campbell, Morton, Roulston, and Barger (2011), in which participants provided spontaneous written definitions of autism. Instead of having participants writing down what they think autism is (Campbell et al., 2011), participants in this study answered the questions verbally, while their responses were audio-recorded.
In the making of the KAQ-I, what was involved in the study by Campbell and Barger
(2011) was also considered, with their Knowledge of Autism Questionnaire (KAQ). The KAQ is a 10-item ‘True’ or ‘False’ scale designed to measure Year 6 to Year 8 students’ knowledge of cause, course, symptoms, and communicability (contagiousness) of autism. In this study, the wording of the previous questionnaire was adjusted with age-appropriate language for target participant group (Years 4 to 6), and was written in spoken language, as participants were interviewed instead of answering the survey questions. In addition, instead of asking participants to answer ‘True’ or ‘False’ to a given statement that targets a specific area of knowledge, the KAQ-I was designed to ask students open-ended questions with prompts, in a similar way to what occurred in the study by Glassberg (2000). Two questions were added (i.e., Questions 4 and 5) to attain data about participants’ exposure to the term ‘autism’ and whether participants had experience with a person with autism. The question “What is autism?” was adapted from Campbell, Morton, Roulston, and Barger (2011), in which participants provided spontaneous written definitions of autism. Instead of having participants writing down what they think autism is (Campbell et al., 2011), participants in this study answered the questions verbally, while their responses were audio-recorded.