Assessment of Challenging Behavior Exhibited by People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Systematic Review

The assessment of challenging behavior exhibited by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is essential for the planning of prevention and intervention programs. This review aimed to identify and analyze the standardized instruments that exclusively focus on the assessment of challenging behavior. We identified and organized 141 articles into four categories: original instrument studies, validation studies, relational studies, and intervention studies. The results identified 24 instruments that generally show high-quality psychometric properties and other utilities beyond the observation of the presence of challenging behavior and diagnostic categorization. Age, level of adaptive behavior, disability, presence of autism spectrum disorder, and medication are some of the variables that were found to be possibly related to the occurrence of challenging behavior. Additionally, the results suggest that interventions focused on supporting positive behavior or providing training on behavior to professionals and caregivers significantly reduced the occurrence of these behaviors. Instruments that help us to understand and measure the challenging behavior exhibited by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are essential for the design of effective evaluation and intervention protocols.