Autism Early Intervention Providers: Their Priorities, Use of Empirically Supported Practices, and Professional Development Needs.

High attrition: Only 77 of 136 participants completed the core section on practices used, and even fewer completed training preference questions (n=59-63). This means the results on practice use rely on a subset of the recruited group. Self-selection bias: Participants were recruited via social media and professional networks, which may over-represent providers with specific interests or access to these networks. Coding difficulty: Inter-rater reliability for classifying practices as focused vs. non-focused was initially moderate (kappa = 0.57), requiring a change in definitions to resolve, which introduces some subjectivity in how practices were categorized. Small sample for some disciplines: Only 2 occupational therapists and 12 speech pathologists participated, so the findings cannot be reliably generalized to these specific professions individually.

The study was funded by Griffith University. No other conflicts of interest were declared.

Do not assume that a provider's high confidence or strong belief in the evidence for a practice means the practice is actually supported. The study found zero agreement between what providers believed about the evidence for their chosen strategies and how those strategies were classified by researchers.