Research has demonstrated that early intervention for young children with autism has a significant positive impact on child progress. However, little is known about the effectiveness of early autism intervention and language acquisition for children with different levels of sociodemographic risk factors (SDR). We examined the effect of these risk factors on the efficacy of the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) intervention. We aimed to develop a scale of SDR factors and examine the relationship of this scale to child and family factors in order to investigate the validity of this measure. We hypothesized that families with a greater number of risk factors will have children with significantly lower communication abilities. We created the SDR scale from existing variables in a multisite,randomized,controlled trial of early intervention using the ESDM. These data are from a subset of 74 families, when the child with autism was 12-24 months old. Items are from the Life Experiences Survey, CHARGE family characteristics questionnaire, and enrollment interviews. For each factor endorsed by the parent, a point was given, for a possible score of 16 points. Item-level analysis of SDR revealed the following: child not living with both parents 10.8%, mother with high school degree or less 16.2%, father with high school degree or less 10.8%, unemployed father 6.8%, family income below $50,000, 23%, one/both parents born outside the US 21.6% resided in US for < 10 years, 17.6%, parents with primary language other than English, 25.7%, sibling with a disability, 29.7% (mean = 2.47, SD = 1.753, median = 2, mode = 2). The results suggest that the SDR scale may be a useful tool to investigate variability in response to intervention and parent learning. These family risk factors may have implications for individualization of intervention.