Stepped Transition to Employment and Postsecondary Education Success (STEPS) for Adolescents and Adults with Autism: Community Implementation Pilot Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Programming to optimize successful transition into adulthood and build skills for independence is consistent with the goal of improving autonomous living among adults with autism, which is a top stakeholder-identified priority. There has been surprisingly little research; however, on structured curricula targeting transition into adulthood. Objective: This formative community pilot trial of Stepped Transition to Employment and Postsecondary Education Success (STEPS) was designed to test feasibility and effectiveness as implemented by community-based providers and, secondarily, to identify factors that affect implementation. Methods: This was a 2-phase study. Phase 1 involved engagement with a group of community stakeholders to identify factors likely to influence implementation of STEPS. Phase 2 involved an open pilot trial of STEPS. In the Hybrid Type 1 trial, 24 adolescents and young adults with autism received STEPS in their communities at a local agency unaffiliated with the research study. Results: Based on stakeholder input (Phase 1), several adjustments were made to the program before implementation (eg, increased attention to building client motivation and clarification of the role of caregivers). Stakeholders and providers indicated that STEPS could be successfully delivered and adopted in the community. From the pilot (Phase 2), results indicate feasibility of study procedures and intervention implementation, supporting future larger-scale implementation. Satisfaction (eg, how helpful and beneficial) with the program was reported as moderate or higher by the participants, and the only 2 drops occurred before the program start. Caregiver-rated transition readiness significantly increased from baseline to end point (P<.001), as well as some domains of functional independence (finance management, self-care, and engagement in the community; all P<.05). Employment and education status at the end point did not yield a clear pattern indicating a positive or negative impact of the program. Conclusions: This pilot study supports the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of STEPS as delivered by community providers.
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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 | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 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".