A Multidisciplinary Team versus Single Practitioners: Parental Satisfaction and Wait in the Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnostic Experience
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This is a mixed-methods study investigating parental satisfaction and wait times as parents \ninquire about an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis for their child in a Northern Ontario \ncommunity. Satisfaction and wait times of those diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder \n(ASD) by a single practitioner were compared to satisfaction and wait times of those \ndiagnosed by the multidisciplinary assessment team in the Sudbury/Manitoulin region (the \nAutism Diagnostic Team; ADT). No significant differences were noted between groups on \nsatisfaction or wait times. However, ADT group received much more consistent service, with \nless variation in wait times between clients, and more consistent provision of comprehensive \nservices prior to the diagnostic meeting. Points of interest are noted for practitioners \nincluding increased wait times for parents of children with milder forms of ASD and for girls. \nNo differences in wait time or satisfaction were noted between language groups. Content \nanalysis of the qualitative interviews representing mainly single practitioners saw the \nemergence of themes including difficulty activating the assessment process, concerns \nregarding the wait, and appointment demands. The importance of professional expertise, \nempathy, and respectful communication also emerged. Parents felt the experience was \ndeeply distressing and they often experienced abandonment following the diagnostic process. \nAdditionally, parents whose children did not receive a diagnosis often felt confusion about \nwhat to do next. Reducing wait times, increasing professional expertise, completing \ncomprehensive assessments, and using truly interdisciplinary teams should continue to be the \nfocus of service improvements that may translate into improved satisfaction.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.006 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| 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".