Open Society

In this evaluation, we identify a structural issue—low quality intervention research—that has significant implications for autistic youth transitioning from high school to adulthood. Unsatisfactory outcomes for recently graduated autistic adults could be, at least in part, because the services provided to support their transition to adulthood simply are not efficacious, and not because their disability status inherently leads to poor outcomes. Our findings may also explain negative perceptions of the services offered to transition autistic youth, from both autistic youth and parents. Autistic youth who recently graduated high school describe a lack of appropriate supports that meet their specific needs (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2020), and parents report optimism about school services when their children first enter the transition period, but find that school-based transition services do not meet their expectations over time (Kirby et al., 2020). For intervention research that uses the experimental methods we examine here, significant improvements will need to be made. These include reducing significant risks of bias, adequately assessing adverse events, and focusing on meaningful outcomes. These improvements are essential for ensuring professionals provide the support transition-age autistic students deserve.

The second structural issue, which is the focus of this review, is that there may be little high-quality research available to inform educators and other service providers regarding the types of support they should provide to transition-age autistic youth. Fewer funding dollars are spent, and fewer research reports are published, on interventions designed for transition-age autistic youth as compared to interventions designed for younger autistic children (Cervantes et al., 2021; Hume et al., 2021). This could be because researchers and funders consider early childhood to be a “critical period” when intervention services are most likely to be effective, despite a lack of evidence for this claim (Sandbank, Bottema-Beutel, & Woynaroski, 2021). In addition, previous syntheses that address research quality suggest autism intervention research in general lacks rigor (Davis et al., 2019; Gates et al., 2017; Sandbank et al., 2020), and this could also be true for research on transition-age autistic youth. Poor quality research exacerbates our ability to train school professionals and other providers to implement appropriate transition services because it is difficult to discern which services are worth implementing. In this study, we investigate this issue by evaluating all available research (including group and single-case designs (SCDs)) on interventions designed for transition-age autistic youth, which can inform services that focus on the transition to adulthood.

The question is simple: Is there room for disabled kids at a piano school? On a swim team? In most classrooms? The answer, right now, seems to be no.

My kids have been kicked out of many, many places for being different—just like I was.