Evidence-Based Social Skills Interventions for Children with Autism: A Meta-analysis

The Purpose of this study was to provide a synthesis of research studies published in the last ten years on interventions to increase social skills for children and adolescents with ASD, examine the outcomes of these studies and evaluate whether a given intervention meets the criteria for evidence-based practice. Thirty-eight studies were included in this review, of which 36 were single subject research studies and 2 group experimental studies. Results varied widely both between intervention types, and with the different studies within each intervention type. While Social Stories, Peer-Mediated, and Video-Modeling all met the criteria for evidence-based, a closer look at percentage of nonoverlapping data points (PAD) shows that only Video-Modeling meets criteria for being evidence-based as well as demonstrating high effectiveness as an intervention strategy.