Special Issue: Advancing Measurement in Research and Practice for Autistic Adults

 

This special issue of the journal Autism in Adulthood will offer an international forum to present and reflect on scientific developments in measurement topics impacting autistic adults, particularly those outcomes that are meaningful and relevant to autistic individuals. Manuscripts which include measurement development and methods that fully partner with autistic individuals to identify what is meaningful to them are especially welcomed.

This broad scope includes, but is not limited to:

• Evaluation of patient-reported outcome measures, standardized performance assessments, screening tools, and/or observation tools.
• Measures aimed at individual, organization, community, or population levels.
• Methods which incorporate co-production of research to identify what should be measured, and/or how these outcomes should be measured, in partnership with those affected by research.
• Studies and perspectives on how to best assess outcomes in under-explored or under-represented groups in autism research.
• Development, adaptation, and psychometric testing of instruments or tasks, to include the validation of tools previously used on non-autistic samples for use with autistic adults.
• Approaches and tools which capture assessment of the environment and context in which autistic individuals live, work, and participate (e.g. the physical, social, temporal, virtual, cultural contexts and other contexts that may impact desired engagement).
• Measures and approaches that utilize a socio-ecological perspective to understand the complexities of an autistic individual’s life.
• Discussion of topics impacting methodological rigor in establishing psychometric properties of measures being tested, including sample heterogeneity.
• Conceptual pieces which advance measurement, such as discussion of novel or emerging outcome constructs, including those with or without established measures or testing.

Manuscripts may correspond to any Autism in Adulthood article type, including Original Research, Brief Reports, Advances in Methodology, In-Depth Analysis, Perspective, and/or Insights.