LEAP and Autism Ranking:

Status Research

There are a number of limitations to all of the research studies published to date. For example

• The majority of studies (seven) used single-case designs (such as multiple baseline or withdrawal) and included six or less participants.
• Some of these studies were vague about some of the details of the study. For example, the study by Hoyson, Jamieson, Strain (1984) described the participants as “autistic-like”, making it unclear if they had actually received a formal diagnosis of autism.
• The study by Strain and Bovey (2011) had a number of limitations including the fact that the researchers made no direct observational measures of child behavior; the participants all appeared to be in the moderate to severe range of autism; and the children in the full replication classes were only exposed to a brief period of time during which most components of the intervention were in place.
• The study by Boyd et al (2014) had a number of limitations including that the researchers used raw versus standard scores for some measures; the researchers were reliant on school officials to nominate classrooms/teachers to participate in the study; there were some pre-treatment differences between groups; the assessors were not blind to the children’s group assignment; and the control condition used may represent the ‘‘best’’ of standard practice and may differ substantially from the modal level of quality that reflects ‘‘business-as-usual’’ classroom practices.
• Most of the studies were undertaken by researchers who were not independent of the interventions being studied. Those researchers may therefore have been biased towards the intervention, however unconsciously.
• None of the studies appeared to involve autistic people or their parents and carers in the design, development and evaluation of those studies.

For a comprehensive list of potential flaws in research studies, please see Why some autism research studies are flawed

Updated

16 Jun 2022

Last Review

01 Sep 2017

Next Review

01 Jan 2024