Towards empathetic autism research: Developing an autism-specific Research Passport
Despite a dramatic increase in the amount of autism research taking place, autistic adults often report negative experiences of participating in such research. In other areas where community members report dissatisfaction (e.g., healthcare, criminal justice), ‘passports’ or ‘toolkits’ have been developed. In the current project, we created a Research Passport that could be used by autistic adults and autism researchers when engaging in research. Using a participatory framework, we designed and developed a Research Passport via an iterative design process. First, focus groups with autistic adults (n=9) and autism researchers (n=6) were used to elicit initial ideas for a Research Passport. Findings showed that the Research Passport (1) was perceived to be a useful idea, but not a panacea for all issues in autism research, (2) needed to be universal and flexible, and (3) could have a broad remit (e.g., to record scores on commonly-used standardized tasks that could, with permission, be shared with different researchers). Next, a preliminary evaluation of a prototype Research Passport was conducted via usability testing in three ongoing research projects. Nine autistic participants provided feedback (via a survey), as did three researchers (via interviews). We identified three themes from these data, highlighting how the Research Passport: (1) promoted positive participant-researcher relationships, (2) provided a structure and framework to support existing practices, and (3) needed to be adapted slightly to facilitate usability and manage expectations. Overall, the Research Passport was perceived to be useful in promoting empathetic autism research. Further design and large-scale testing are warranted.