Examining the Strengths, Experiences, and Needs of Canadian Post-Secondary Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Post-secondary students with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) represent an underserved and underrepresented population in post-secondary environments and research. A study in the United Kingdom found that post-secondary students with ASD reported a higher frequency of thoughts about withdrawing from studies and difficulties with adjustment compared to other students. However, Canadian research exploring the experiences and needs of Autistic post-secondary students is limited. Additionally, few studies have reported the perspectives of post-secondary students on the autism spectrum directly. The purpose of this study was to develop and pilot a survey designed to examine the self-reported strengths, experiences, and needs of Canadian post-secondary students with ASD. The development of this survey was guided by steering committee members with relevant lived experiences. Pilot testing was conducted with a sample of 13 individuals who self-identified with ASD and had recently attended or were currently attending college or university in Ontario. This thesis was divided into three separate studies. Study 1 described an effective application of a participatory action research approach to develop a survey. Study 2 reported preliminary findings following pilot testing of the survey. Strengths reported by participants were mainly academic, while areas of limitation included social challenges and barriers within the post-secondary environment. Participants generally reported positive sentiments regarding services accessed. Study 3 described the process for gathering feedback for survey revision from pilot participants, which highlighted a preference for quantitative questions and provided suggestions for revision for future iterations of the survey. Recommendations for future research were discussed.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
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".