Predictors of Parent Engagement in Part C Early Intervention for Autism: The Role of Single Parenthood and Initial Motivation.

Cancellations were recorded only as yes or no at monthly meetings, so a parent who cancelled once was scored the same as a parent who cancelled repeatedly. How often parents practised at home was their own report, which tends to be inflated. The authors state the analyses may have been underpowered to detect small effects of parent characteristics. Families who volunteer for research, and families their providers chose to refer, tend to be more motivated than families in routine care, so engagement here is likely higher than on a typical caseload. Thirteen families whose sessions were conducted in Spanish were left out, and parents of different racial and ethnic backgrounds were pooled into a single group, so the study cannot say much about those families. Engagement happens between a parent and a provider, so the study cannot tell which of the two is driving what was observed. The children were 16 to 34 months old and referred over social communication concerns; a formal autism diagnosis was not required, so this is a sample with early indicators rather than confirmed diagnoses.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship or publication of the article. No funder is named in the text supplied.

Do not read the single-parenthood result as single parents caring less about their child's therapy. The study measured one thing, how actively a parent joined in during recorded sessions, and it is an observational analysis of who did what rather than a test of whether extra support would change it. Do not assume a parent who attends reliably is engaged either, since attendance was unrelated to in-session participation and nothing measured predicted cancellation.