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Research: Autism Strengths, Social Identity & Wellbeing

c.chow

New Member
Hi all,
I'm looking for autistic people aged 16-30 to complete a survey for my research into autism strengths, social identity and wellbeing. I wanted to do this research because I’ve noticed how much focus there has been on the difficulties associated with autism, and less about the strengths which I’d like to explore about and shine a bit more light on! We hope to use the findings to understand how to support autistic people around stigma, discrimination and developing a balanced view of autism. I’ve worked with members of the autism community (including autistic researchers) to help me with the development of this research project. I think this is a really important and interesting topic – I'd love to know what you think?

Below is the link to the anonymous survey involving some questionnaires and a brief video about different features of autism. It should take roughly 20-30 minutes to complete in total. There is also an optional prize draw for £50 voucher!

If you’d like to read more about the study or participate, please click in this link: https://bathpsychology.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1BJyEcydvj270uq

Please feel free to get in touch directly if you have any questions/thoughts about the study or this area of research generally.

Thank you so much for your attention!
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Claudia

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This sounds like a great area for research. What's the rationale for the cut off age to consult being 30?
 
I don't mean to be a cynic here, people researching Autism is obviously a good thing. I just feel questionnaires are such a bad way to gain intel, often the questions are brief or vague, we can misinterpret, and you can also misinterpret what we ment, there is no context. As already stated, I also don't see any logic in cutting the age off at 30.

If you want to discuss your initial hypotheses or theory's regarding autism then I'm happy to do that.
 
This sounds like a great area for research. What's the rationale for the cut off age to consult being 30?
Hiya, thanks for your interest! It's a fair question, others have asked the same- the age range was set because we’re particularly interested in this from a developmental angle. There’s a lot of key/social transitions that feature from adolescence to young adulthood and we thought it would be good to explore how autistic identity is experienced/differs across these ages. I guess my hope is that there is something to be learnt that can help us think about early support for autistic young people.

I hope that makes sense? I know there is so much to think about across the lifespan but for the purposes of my project I just had to narrow the focus down...
 
I don't mean to be a cynic here, people researching Autism is obviously a good thing. I just feel questionnaires are such a bad way to gain intel, often the questions are brief or vague, we can misinterpret, and you can also misinterpret what we ment, there is no context. As already stated, I also don't see any logic in cutting the age off at 30.

If you want to discuss your initial hypotheses or theory's regarding autism then I'm happy to do that.
Not at all, I think your point is totally valid- there are definitely disadvantages to using questionnaires! For the purposes of the project we chose quite specific questionnaires to see if there might be any patterns that emerge between responses, which would be interesting to explore just as tentative ideas for future research. But like you say, taking a more specific (rather then open) approach means there will be certainly be limitations as to how much (and how well) we can interpret from the results which will be important to acknowledge when we get to that stage.

Taking a different method such as interviews/ focus groups would be a way to address some of those issues you mentioned and get some rich data, though with a much smaller number of participants. If only we had the scope to do both! It could be great for future research projects though.
 
Hiya, thanks for your interest! It's a fair question, others have asked the same- the age range was set because we’re particularly interested in this from a developmental angle. There’s a lot of key/social transitions that feature from adolescence to young adulthood and we thought it would be good to explore how autistic identity is experienced/differs across these ages. I guess my hope is that there is something to be learnt that can help us think about early support for autistic young people.

I hope that makes sense? I know there is so much to think about across the lifespan but for the purposes of my project I just had to narrow the focus down...

But your title for the research doesn't give that impression, as it doesn’t refer to the age group studied. If you are excluding the experience of anyone over 30 that should be clear in your title.

Quite a lot of ideas may have been gained on the broad topic your title mentions from that group, so if they weren't asked you are not in fact studying how autistic people think about strengths and positives of autism, it's about how autistic people aged 16 to 30 think about that.

Probably just need to reflect the actual focus of the study in your title. Still a great idea, but as you say limited by your resources.
 

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