ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Internalizing conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and difficulties with developing and maintaining friendships are common among autistic children and adolescents. Participation in extracurricular activities may buffer against these challenges as they provide naturalistic opportunities to bring peers with shared interests and skills together. As such, the purpose of the current study was to examine associations between sport and club participation and (1) friendship success and (2) co-occurring anxiety and depression in a large sample of autistic youth. METHODS: Secondary analysis was performed using data from the 2018-2019 National Survey of Children's Health. Participants were 562 autistic children (ages 6-11 years) and 818 autistic adolescents (ages 12-17 years). Within each age group, a series of binary logistic regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Club participation was not associated with friendship or internalizing conditions. However, participation in sports was positively associated with friendship success among both children (OR = 2.07, p = .006) and adolescents (OR = 2.35, p = .001). Results also found that adolescents who participated in sports were 34% less likely to have diagnosis of depression (p = .048). CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that participation in sports may play a meaningful role in protecting against depression during adolescence and serve as a context for friendship development across childhood and adolescence. Future research should address barriers to extracurricular activity participation and identify the specific components of sports that are most beneficial to autistic youth to inform activity offerings and the development of interventions targeting friendship formation and mental health outcomes.
ABSTRACT
Early identification of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in non-English speaking children often relies on translation of English ASD screening measures. Most measures employ a forward-back translation approach, despite data suggesting that this method may result in poor psychometric properties. Some studies in non-ASD fields have suggested that a rigorous method of translation with cultural adaptation may yield better psychometric properties, but no studies in the ASD field have compared the two approaches directly. This investigation compares these two translation methodologies to determine if they produce psychometrically similar or dissimilar measures. Three hundred and eighty US-based Spanish-speaking caregivers of children 8-16 months old were randomly assigned to complete either a forward-back Spanish translation or a rigorous translation with cultural adaptation of a parent-report ASD screening tool. Measurement invariance analyses determined that the two translations were psychometrically dissimilar. Additional qualitative explanatory methods using cognitive interviews examined textual differences and participant preferences between non-invariant items. LAY SUMMARY: Autism screening questionnaires created in English need to be translated into other languages so non-English speaking parents can fill them out accurately. Traditionally, researchers have not considered cultural differences when they translate these questionnaires. When we compared a direct translation to a translation with cultural adaptations, the two questionnaires were statistically different. Parents interpreted and responded to the same questions differently, depending on which version they filled out.
