Autism Community Research Priorities: The Potential of Future Research to Benefit Autistics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53103/cjess.v3i2.118Keywords:
Autism Research Priorities, Emancipatory Research, Participatory Research, WellbeingAbstract
Despite the enormous amounts of money spent on autism research, there has been little focus to date on what members of the autistic community believe should be prioritised by autism researchers. Our systematic review of the literature identified three published studies that had developed wide-ranging autism research priority sets. We undertook an in-depth analysis of these priorities sets to determine whether research focused on each priority had the potential to benefit the well-being of and/or emancipate autistic individuals. For this purpose, we used published ‘inclusive research’ criteria. We also compared the three sets of autism research priorities in the context of autistic well-being and emancipation. Our findings demonstrated substantial differences between the priorities in the studies in terms of whether they might benefit and/or be emancipatory for autistic people. Autistic people were a small minority of participants in studies where participant numbers had been recorded. There has yet to be a study focused solely on understanding the autism research priorities of autistic adults.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Nick Chown, Luke Beardon, Shona Louise Murphy, Elsa Suckle, Joanna Baker-Rogers
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