Search

Importance: Some autistic adults experience depression and anxiety related to their social relationships. There is a need for evidence-based occupational therapy interventions that decrease depression and anxiety and improve the health of social relationships for autistic adults. Objective: To determine the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of the Healthy Relationships on the Autism Spectrum (HEARTS) intervention, a six-session, group-based psychoeducational intervention for the improvement of relationship health. Design: One-group pretest–posttest design with a 3-mo follow-up after baseline. Setting: United States; online intervention through community organization. Participants: Fifty-five adults, ages 20 to 43 yr, with a professional or self-diagnosis of autism and the capacity to independently participate in an online, group-based, participatory class. Intervention: Participants received 6 90-min weekly sessions that addressed healthy relationship topics, including recognizing abuse, meeting people, maintaining relationships, setting interpersonal boundaries, neurohealth for relationships, and ending relationships. A psychoeducational approach that provided education and involved guided discovery and strategy acquisition was used. Outcomes and Measures: All measures were self-administered through an online survey. Depression and anxiety were assessed using instruments from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System. Results: Fifty-five participants completed the intervention. Postintervention scores revealed statistically significant improvements in depression and anxiety. Conclusions and Relevance: HEARTS is a promising intervention for improving depression and anxiety among autistic adults and should be investigated further. What This Article Adds: HEARTS offers a potentially effective, nonpharmacological, psychoeducational group-based intervention option to promote healthy relationships for autistic adults. Positionality Statement: This article uses identity-first language (autistic person) in accordance with the preference of autistic self-advocates (Autistic Self Advocacy Network, 2020; Kenny et al., 2016; Lord et al., 2022).

Researchers are increasingly relying on online methods for data collection, including for qualitative research involving interviews and focus groups. In this letter, we alert autism researchers to a possible threat to data integrity in such studies: “scammer” participants, who may be posing as autistic people and/or parents of autistic children in research studies, presumably for financial gain. Here, we caution qualitative autism researchers to be vigilant of potential scammer participants in their online studies and invite a broader discussion about the implications of such fraudulent acts. Lay abstract Doing research online, via Zoom, Teams, or live chat, is becoming more and more common. It can help researchers to reach more people, including from different parts of the world. It can also make the research more accessible for participants, especially those with different communication preferences. However, online research can have its downsides too. We have recently been involved in three studies in which we had in-depth discussions with autistic people and/or parents of autistic children about various topics. It turns out, though, that some of these participants were not genuine. Instead, we believe they were “scammer participants”: people posing as autistic people or parents of autistic children, possibly to gain money from doing the research. This is a real problem because we need research data that we can trust. In this letter, we encourage autism researchers to be wary of scammer participants in their own research.