Child and Parental Mental Health as Correlates of School Non-Attendance and School Refusal in Children on the Autism Spectrum.
Dawn Adams
PMID 34331173WHAT IT FOUND
Parents reported children on the autism spectrum missed 6.3 full days and 3.8 half days over 20 school days.
School refusal accounted for 57.2% of full-day absences. Parents not in paid work were linked to more absences.
Key findings
01Parents reported children missed 6.3 full days and 3.8 half days in a 20-school-day period.
02School refusal accounted for 57.2% of full-day absences and 52.6% of half-day absences.
03Parents not in paid work were associated with increased risk of absences by 80% for full days and 90% for half days, and child anxiety was associated with increased risk of half-day absences by 3%.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Absence counts were parent-reported with no school records to validate them. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show whether parental employment, anxiety, or other factors caused absences, or whether child absence affected those factors. Recruitment was online through shared social media posts, which may have attracted families already concerned about school attendance. The sample was 106 children, and some absence types had only 5-10 participants reporting an absence, limiting confidence in subtype findings. Only children aged up to 17 with parent-reported autism and an SCQ score of 15 or above were included, which may exclude some groups. The full-day absence model with mental health variables was significant overall but had no significant individual covariates, so it did not identify a clear predictor for full-day absences. The child anxiety association was small: risk of half-day absences increased by 3%.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that moving a parent into paid employment or treating child anxiety will reduce school absence. The study is cross-sectional and parent-reported, so it cannot show cause; it only reports associations at one time.