The Costs of Caring for a Child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The primary purpose of this exploratory autism research was to examine the lived experiences of female primary caregivers of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHODS: Specifically the costs and benefits of the primary caregivers' experiences were examined through semi-structured one-one-one interviews. The specific focus of this paper was to examine the costs of caring for a child with an ASD, whereby costs did not refer solely to monetary costs, but were related to all aspects of the caregivers' lives. Interviews were completed with 8 mothers of children that had been formally diagnosed with an ASD. RESULTS: Undoubtedly all family members within the family unit were affected by a child's diagnosis with ASD as evidenced by the costs revealed by mothers. The subthemes derived from the theme of costs included the following: financial and work costs, costs to the health of family, social costs, and costs to overall family life. The results from this research provide evidence of the challenges associated with caring for a child with an ASD. CONCLUSIONS: It is anticipated that the insights provided by these mothers can act as a source of support for others faced with a similar situation. Additionally health care professionals may be able to use the knowledge gained from such qualitative endeavors in order to help parents cope more effectively with their caregiving responsibilities associated with children with ASDs. The mothers within this study are remarkable women that, for the most part, were able to rise above the negatives/costs associated with caring for a child with an ASD and find the silver linings amidst the turmoil. As remarkable as these women are in the daily struggles they face with their children, it is evident that more resources and support are required to assist these women and their families.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".