Autism service preferences of parents/guardians and autistic adults in five countries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Scholars and activists debate whether people on the autism spectrum should access autism-specific services or general/inclusive/mainstream services. This article presents quantitative results from a mixed-methods survey of autistic adults and parents/guardians of autistic people in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Respondents reported categories of services used (autism-specific, mixed-disability, or general/inclusive/mainstream), satisfaction, and overall service preference. Most respondents preferred autism-specific services, followed by different categories of services for different service types. Demographic factors had little influence on overall service preferences. No significant differences were found between adults' and parents/guardians' overall service preferences. For parents/guardians, using autism-specific services was associated with a preference for autism-specific services. There were significant associations between the services respondents reported having previously used and their overall service preference. Parents/guardians in Italy and France reported lower satisfaction with many services. These results suggest that a preference for autism-specific services pervades different groups. While most respondents did endorse autism-specific services, the strong secondary preference for different service categories encourages providers and policy makers to attend to diverse needs. While satisfaction was generally middling to high, there remain areas for improvement, especially in general job training services. General services can use a Universal Design approach and collaborate with autism-specific and mixed-disability services to increase accessibility to diverse populations. The influence of previous service use on preferences suggests that providers can leverage strengths of existing services, leverage and create connections, and ask users about previous experiences to better address their expectations. LAY SUMMARY: This study asked autistic adults and parents/guardians of autistic people what they think about autism services. Most parents/guardians and adults liked services that focus on autism, but many parents/guardians and adults liked them for some things and not others. All services can ask people about services they used in the past and learn from the strengths of good services through Universal Design and working with other services.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".