Parent Acceptability of Youth Engaged Through Intervention

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) possess a variety of characteristics including the need to follow a rigid routine, difficulty responding appropriately to conversations and struggling to make friends (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). To address these social deficits, a number of studies have examined the effectiveness of social skill groups. These studies found that being in a social skills group intervention significantly improved youth’s social interaction, such as an increase in communication with peers and greater use of greetings (Barry, Klinger, Lee, Palardy, Gilmore & Bodin, 2003; Kroeger, Schultz & Newsom, 2007; Mrug & Hodgens, 2008). There have been fewer studies, however, that have investigated parent’s views of the effectiveness of group interventions for their children. One study examined how parents of youth with ASD would rate the social skills interventions (Lopata et al., 2012). Parent’s perceptions and parent acceptability of treatment is important because parents know their child the best and can detect the subtlest of changes in behavior as a result of intervention. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness and parent acceptability of Youth Engagement Through Intervention (YETI), an eight-week social skills group intervention for children with ASD ages 8 to 13. Sessions focused on improving the children’s social skills using evidence-based practices such as behavioral supports, video modeling and social narratives. After the intervention was completed, parents completed the Parent Acceptability Survey, which measures the degree to which parents find the YETI intervention useful, and favorable. Preliminary data are currently being analyzed and results will be prepared for the conference