Towards empathetic autism research – Developing and evaluating an autism-specific Research Passport: This project aims to develop a Research Passport. This research passport is a tool for improving autistic people’s experiences of taking part in research. It is a way for autistic people and researchers to have a conversation about things like communication preferences and the research environment. To ensure the Research Passport is useful and meets people’s needs, we gather views via surveys and focus groups. We will trial the passport with autistic adults, parents of autistic children and researchers. Importantly, this project also aims to create a series of ‘toolkits’ to share with researchers. This toolkit will include guidelines on inviting participants to your lab and how to facilitate inclusive, autism friendly research.
CRAE lead: Laura Crane with Maria Ashworth and Liz Pellicano
To keep up to date with its progress, please get in touch with Maria by emailing maria.ashworth@ucl.ac.uk.
Key publications:
- Pre-print: Ashworth, M., Crane, L., Steward, R., Bovis, M., & Pellicano, L. (2020). Towards empathetic autism research: Developing an autism-specific Research Passport.
- Research Toolkit: The research toolkit is a collection of tips and example documents we have collated to help researchers produce documents to conduct inclusive, accessible autism research by learning from examples of good practice. It includes templates, such as:
– Information sheets & consent forms
– Recruitment flyers & posters
– Directions to find research labs
– Interview schedules
– Participation certificates
– Good practice guidelines
– Research summaries.
Find them here: The Research Toolkit