Highways to happiness for autistic adults? Perceived causal relations among clinicians

PLoS One. 2020 Dec 15;15(12):e0243298. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243298. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

The network approach to psychological phenomena advances our understanding of the interrelations between autism and well-being. We use the Perceived Causal Relations methodology in order to (i) identify perceived causal pathways in the well-being system, (ii) validate networks based on self-report data, and (iii) quantify and integrate clinical expertise in autism research. Trained clinicians served as raters (N = 29) completing 374 cause-effects ratings of 34 variables on well-being and symptomatology. A subgroup (N = 16) of raters chose intervention targets in the resulting network which we found to match the respective centrality of nodes. Clinicians' perception of causal relations was similar to the interrelatedness found in self-reported client data (N = 323). We present a useful tool for translating clinical expertise into quantitative information enabling future research to integrate this in scientific studies.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Multicenter Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Autistic Disorder / psychology*
  • Autistic Disorder / therapy
  • Child
  • Female
  • Happiness*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Self Report

Grants and funding

DB is supported by ERC Consolidator Grant no. 647209. HMG is supported by the NWO VICI Grant no. 453-16-006. This research project is supported by ZonMW Grant no. 70-73400-98-002.