Social Capital and Autism in Young Adulthood: Applying Social Network Methods to Measure the Social Capital of Autistic Young Adults.
Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick, Collette Sosnowy, Laura Graham Holmes and 2 others
PMID 32954220WHAT IT FOUND
A social network survey was feasible for autistic young adults, showing their networks are mostly family and rarely include service providers.
Employment support was the least accessed resource. This pilot method needs a larger sample to link network types to adult outcomes.
Key findings
01Participants' networks consisted primarily of family members, with very few service providers named as important alters.
02Friendship and emotional support were the most commonly accessed resources, while employment support was the least commonly accessed.
03The study demonstrated that duocentric networks (combining young adult and parent reports) are feasible to collect but require methodological revisions to accurately capture ecosystem overlap.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was very small (17 young adults) and not statistically powered to test differences by gender or other demographics. The survey limited participants to naming only five important people, which likely undercounted the true size of their social networks. The sample was predominantly white and from relatively advantaged families, limiting generalizability. This was a feasibility study designed to test the method, not to determine if specific network types cause better outcomes.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was approved by the Drexel University institutional review board.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the low percentage of professional providers in these networks as evidence that therapy is ineffective or unwanted. The study design limited participants to naming only five people, and the sample was too small to draw conclusions about network composition or its impact on employment outcomes.