Using Q-sort method to explore autistic students' views of the impacts of their anxiety at school.
Kathryn Ambrose, Kate Simpson, Dawn Adams
PMID 38390716WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic students reported anxiety most strongly impacted schoolwork, making it hard to start, concentrate, or do their best.
They also described freezing, masking feelings, and struggling to listen. These varied impacts mean a single anxiety profile does not fit all students.
Key findings
01The most highly ranked impacts of anxiety across the sample were academic: difficulty doing best schoolwork, learning or concentrating, and starting schoolwork.
02Students identified six distinct viewpoints of how anxiety impacted them, ranging from masking and freezing while still participating, to anger and trouble, to missing school entirely.
03Nearly one-third of participants did not load onto any of the six identified viewpoints, indicating a wide range of individual experiences.
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 study recruited participants via social media advertising for anxiety research, which likely resulted in a sample with higher anxiety levels than the general autistic population. Children with lower reading abilities were excluded, so the findings do not represent the views of autistic students who cannot read short phrases. The sample had a higher proportion of females (42.2%) than typical autism prevalence estimates, which may bias the findings toward female presentations of anxiety. As an online study, researchers could not verify if parents assisted the children in completing the Q-sort activity. Q-sort methods are designed to capture the views of the specific sample studied, so the results are not necessarily representative of all autistic students.
Declared interests
The study received financial support from The Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC).
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the six identified viewpoints cover all students. Roughly one-third of participants did not fit into any of the six groups, meaning these profiles are not exhaustive categories for every autistic student with anxiety.