Self-reported impediments at home, school, and community: autistic adults’ first-person accounts of their life trajectories and derived pathways

Abstract

Objectives: Despite suggestions of strengths and abilities of autistic people, it has been an underexplored area in autism research, the primary focus of which has been on examining differences and atypicalities as deficits rather than strengths. Understanding the self-reported impediments via first-person accounts of autistic adults for facilitating the strengths is an important prerequisite for an in-depth comprehension of the unique diversities and potentialities of autistic people, and roadmap development.

Methods: The study is based on qualitative phenomenological inductive thematic analysis through in-depth interviews with 10 verbally- and cognitively-able autistic adults, following purposive and snowball sampling.

Results: The impediments at home, school, and communities are presented through the five inductively extracted themes. Additionally, the study proposes future pathways for fostering an effective environment to nurture the innate potentialities of autistic people via a strength-focused lens.

Conclusion: The study endorses the paradox of strength and atypicalities and advocates a shift from a deficit-focused approach to a strength-focused approach of support, and promotes the neurodiverse model of acceptance and embrace.

Keywords:

• autistic people
• impediments
• home
• school
• community
• strength focused approach
• neurodiversity

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the participant-autistic adults for their agreeableness to voluntarily participate in the study, for their willingness and for trusting us to share the firsthand account of their life experiences. We would like to thank the wonderful peoples in and outside the autistic community who generously helped with the recruitment process.

Author contribution

1st author primarily developed the concept, collected data, analyzed and wrote the manuscript. 2^nd author assisted at every stage since beginning from shaping the thought process and contributed to the fine-tuning of the manuscript throughout and also assisted in the recruitment of sample for the study. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript before submission.

Disclosure statement

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was ethically approved by the Cornell University IRB board under the Human subject exempt category (approval ref: Protocol ID#: 2001009333).

Informed consent

Written consent was undertaken from each of the participant as per Cornell University protocol and format.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for the 1st author was supported by Fulbright Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, United States India Education Foundation (USIEF), India and International Institute of Education (IIE), USA.