Perspectives of young adults with autism spectrum disorder: integrating values in exploring self-determination
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There has been a significant change in the way we view individuals with disabilities over the last few decades. Life possibilities for individuals with disabilities are now reflected in terms of quality of life, self-determination, strengths and capabilities, normalization, and the provision of individualized supports (Wehmeyer & Schalock, 2001). Self-determination (SD), which is implicated in choice and decision making, is an important educational goal that can help individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) as they attempt to negotiate or transition their way into college, work, community involvement, and independent living (Carter, Lane, Pierson, & Stang, 2008; Deci & Ryan 1994; Thoma & Gretzel, 2005). The aim of this dissertation is to gain a better understanding of SD for young Canadian adults with ASD without an intellectual disability (ID). In this mixed-methods study, SD, the participants' value and importance ratings of SD components, and the factors influencing the development of SD were explored using an online survey. Participants were 125 young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 with ASD without an ID across Canada. The results indicated that the sample's mean levels of SD were lower than those reported in the literature for people with ID or other disabilities. Young adults with ASD above 23 years of age who were more educated reported higher levels of SD. However, level of SD did not significantly differ in relation to gender, living situation, or employment status. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that a person's age, SD capacity, and importance ratings predicted higher levels of SD. Furthermore, mean SD satisfaction scores were lower than mean SD importance scores, which has implications for intervention. A thematic analysis revealed SD-related themes associated to success in adulthood, including capacity, control, knowledge of strengths and weaknesses, attaining adult outcomes, and support. Factors that facilitated or hindered participants' SD included SD skills, mental health, societal perceptions about disability, support networks, opportunities, and early educational and life experiences. The knowledge gained from this research will allow researchers and practitioners a better window into the needs and values of persons with ASD regarding their SD, and will provide invaluable information concerning effective and individualized support services. Keywords: self-determination, autism spectrum disorder, young adults, importance and values, predictors, barriers and facilitators, mixed-methods design, thematic analysis
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 distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".