Graduation Year

2006

Document Type

Ed. Specalist

Degree

Ed.S.

Degree Granting Department

Interdisciplinary Education

Major Professor

Kelly A. Powell-Smith, Ph.D.

Keywords

Pediatrician, Screening, Barriers, Early intervention, Training evaluation

Abstract

This study explored the effectiveness of the Autism System of Care (ASC) trainings by measuring change in pediatric healthcare providers' method of identifying young children at-risk for autism spectrum disorders. The majority of participants were pediatricians working in either hospitals or clinics who voluntarily participated in the training. A pretest-posttest nonequivalent-groups design was used in this study. Pre- and post-test questionnaires were used to measure change in participants' screening practices. Due to a small number of participants, most findings from the study were not statistically significant. The small number of healthcare providers who participated in the ASC training was a major limitation to this study. Therefore, although results revealed that there were minimal gains between pre- and post-test administrations, this may be because of the small number of participants and does not necessarily indicate that the ASC training was not effective. Implications for future research in this area also are addressed.

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