parent survey--please take!

[Guest guest]

Parent Survey

Hello Everyone! My name is Zeiger and as many of you know, I

am the mother of a child with autism. Like many of you, I have concerns

about the way our children are evaluated, diagnosed, and treated by the

medical community, especially pediatricians who see children most often.

And like you, my interest in autism diagnosis and treatment extends beyond

concern for only my child. As an advocate for all children with autistic

spectrum disorders, I am particularly interested in finding ways to improve

the methods we currently use for screening, evaluating, and diagnosing.

I am also a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at the Indiana

University of Pennsylvania and have decided to focus my dissertation project

on examining the screening and diagnosis barriers for pediatricians. As a

preliminary step, I am conducting a survey of parents of children with

autism to find out about their experiences with the screening, evaluation,

and diagnosis of their children. I am asking for your assistance because

your collective experience will help to identify barriers to early diagnosis

and assist future children in getting diagnosed earlier. If you are

interested in taking part in this study, please read the Cover Letter below

and follow the directions for completing the survey. Thank you in advance

for your participation.

Cover Letter

Please consider participating in this autism screening and diagnosis

research study. The following information is provided in order to help you

make an informed decision whether or not to participate. If you have any

questions please do not hesitate to ask. You are being asked to participate

because you are a parent or guardian of a child with autism, and you

subscribe to .

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of pediatricians in the

identification of autism in young children. Participation in this study will

require approximately 10 minutes of your time. You will be asked to respond

to 13 questions relating to how your child was diagnosed with autism and

describing the role of your pediatrician in the screening, evaluation, and

diagnostic process.

There are no known risks or discomforts associated with this research. Your

participation in this study is voluntary. You are free to decide not to

participate in this study. Your completion of the survey questions indicates

your consent to participate in this project. This survey is designed so that

participants will remain anonymous. If you choose to participate, no

personally identifying information will accompany your online response data.

Your responses will be considered only in combination with those from other

participants. Once you send responses online, the data will be aggregated

with those of other participants and will not be able to be retrieved. The

information obtained in the study may be published in scientific journals or

presented at scientific meetings, but your identity will be protected

because the data are collected in an anonymous format.

The results of this study will be made available to all members of this

list, whether they were participants in the study or not, in the spring of

2005.

If you have any questions, please contact the Project Director listed below.

Project Director: Zeiger, M. A.

Position: 3rd-year doctoral student

Campus Address: 222 Uhler Hall

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Indiana, PA 15705

E-mail: victoria@...

Phone: 724/357-4529

Faculty Sponsor: Krys Kaniasty, Ph.D.

E-mail: kaniasty@...

Phone: 724/357-5999

This project has been approved by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects (Phone:

724/357-7730).

To access the survey, please click on the following address:

www.mgleason007.com/autism This link will take you to a secure website

where you can anonymously complete the survey online. If the link is not

active, just type the adress into your browser and it will take you there.

Survey data will be collected until Monday, November 29, 2004.

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. As a parent of a

child with autism myself, I understand how valuable your time is.