ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study developed a teacher-reported Social Communication Checklist (SCC) based on the DSM-5 criteria for Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder (SCD).Methods: An initial 108-item pool was reduced to 70 items following psychiatric review and refined through expert review. The final SCC comprised 67 items across three domains: social communication (28), literacy-based communication (17), and speech-language-based communication (22), encompassing 12 subdomains. Twenty speech-language pathologists rated item appropriateness, clarity, observability, and age appropriateness using a 5-point Likert scale. A mean rating of ≥3.75 was considered acceptable. Context-specific descriptions and contrasting behavioral examples from daily school routines were incorporated.Results: All 67 items met the acceptance criterion, with mean ratings ranging from 3.93 to 4.90, supporting the relevance, clarity, observability, and developmental appropriateness of the items.Conclusions: The SCC provides a school-context-based screening framework for identifying students’ potential social communication vulnerabilities across social, literacy-based, and speech-language-based domains. The findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the content validity of the SCC and its potential utility for systematic teacher observation in school settings.