Hands-on Emotion Awareness and Regulation Group Training for Autistic Adolescents (HEART)

The Emotion Dysregulation Inventory - Short Form (EDI-SF, Mazefsky, Day, et al., 2018; Mazefsky, Yu, et al., 2018) is a 13-item questionnaire designed to assess emotion regulation problems in children and adolescents through self-report and parent-report. The items are answered on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = "not at all" to 5 = "very severe." The questionnaire evaluates two scales: "Reactivity" and "Dysphoria." Higher scores indicate greater emotional dysregulation. The primary outcome criterion is emotion regulation, which will be assessed from the parent perspective using the EDI-SF.

The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-16; Constantino et al., 2003) is a quantitative measure of autistic traits in children, adolescents, and adults. The SRS-16 (Sturm et al., 2017) is a 16-item parent questionnaire designed to assess social, communicative, and rigid behaviors in children and adolescents for dimensional autism diagnostics. The items are answered on a four-point response scale, ranging from 1 = "not at all" to 4 = "almost always." A total score is calculated by summing the items. The total score ranges from 16 to 80, with higher values indicating greater severity of impairment. The SRS has demonstrated good psychometric properties and cross-cultural validity for the assessment of ASD (Bölte et al., 2008, 2011).

The KIDSCREEN-10 (Ravens-Sieberer et al., 2010) is a brief, standardized instrument for assessing the quality of life and psychological well-being of children and adolescents aged 8 to 18 years from self-report and parent perspective. The KIDSCREEN-10 includes a total of 10 items focusing on various dimensions of quality of life, including emotional well-being, social well-being, physical health, and joy of life. The items are answered on a five-point response scale, ranging from 1 = "not at all true" to 5 = "completely true." The questionnaire is characterized by good psychometric validity and reliability and is suitable for use across different populations (Ravens-Sieberer et al., 2010).

The Beck Depression Inventory for Youth - Second Edition (BDI-Y-2; Beck et al., 2001) is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess the severity of depressive disorder in children and adolescents aged 7 to 18 years. For adults aged 18 and above, the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) is used. The 20 items measure negative thoughts of the child or adolescent about themselves, their life, and the future, as well as feelings of sadness and physiological symptoms of depression, based on the diagnostic criteria of DSM-5. The German version of the instrument demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties (Beck et al., 2001; Siefen & Busch, 2018).

The Beck Anxiety Inventory for Youth - Second Edition (BAI-Y-2; Beck et al., 2001) is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess the severity of anxiety in children and adolescents aged 7 to 18 years. For adults aged 18 and above, the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) is used. The 20 items assess specific and generalized anxieties, including fears related to school, fear of injury, and health-related anxieties. Additionally, the inventory captures various symptoms of anxiety, such as rumination and worry-driven thoughts, as well as physiological symptoms, based on the diagnostic criteria of DSM-5. The German version of the instrument demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties (Beck et al., 2001; Siefen & Busch, 2018).

The Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (PACS; Barnes & Olson, 1982) is a questionnaire used to assess the quality of dyadic parent-child communication between parents and adolescents. The PACS is available for self-report and third-party assessment and includes the subscales "Open Communication" and "Communication Problems." The short version of the instrument contains 6 items, which are answered on a five-point response scale from 1 = "strongly disagree" to 5 = "strongly agree." The problematic items are recoded afterward. The sum of the items is calculated to obtain a total score, which ranges from 6 to 30, with higher scores indicating better quality of parent-child communication. The German version of the PACS demonstrates good psychometric properties (Zapf & Boettcher, 2024).

The Questionnaire for Patient Satisfaction (ZUF-8; Schmidt et al., 1989) is an instrument used to assess overall patient satisfaction at the end of an intervention. The ZUF-8 comprises eight items, which are answered on a four-point Likert scale. The total score is calculated by summing the items, resulting in a score ranging from 8 to 32, with higher values indicating greater patient satisfaction. There are both an adult version for parents and a child version. The ZUF-8 demonstrates good psychometric properties (Kriz et al., 2008).