A Meta-analysis of Outcome Studies of Autistic Adults: Quantifying Effect Size, Quality, and Meta-regression
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Capp, Simone J
Stewart, Gavin R
Kempton, Matthew J
Glaser, Karen
Howlin, Patricia
Happé, Francesca
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Abstract
Longitudinal studies have generally reported poor outcomes in adulthood for the majority of individuals (c.50-60%) with autism. Several factors putatively predict outcome (e.g. IQ), but findings remain mixed. This paper presents an updated meta-analysis of autism outcome studies and extends previous findings with additional analyses (including meta-regression). A total of 4088 records was screened and 18 studies, involving 1199 individuals, were included in the quantitative analysis. Estimated percentages indicated that 20.0% of participants were rated as having a good outcome, 26.6% a fair outcome, and 49.3% a poor outcome. Meta-regression indicated that lower IQ in adulthood was predictive of poor outcome; other meta-regression models did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Overall, outcomes for autistic people are on average poor, and higher IQ appears to be protective against having a poor outcome. The limitations of current constructs of outcome are discussed.
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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
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© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Education
Psychology
Cognitive and computational psychology
Autism spectrum disorder
Functioning
Meta-analysis
Outcome
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Mason, D; Capp, SJ; Stewart, GR; Kempton, MJ; Glaser, K; Howlin, P; Happé, F, A Meta-analysis of Outcome Studies of Autistic Adults: Quantifying Effect Size, Quality, and Meta-regression, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2020