The goal of this randomized clinical trial is to test whether the 6 sessions HEARTS Healthy Relationships classes increases the satisfaction that autistic adults feel about their friendships and dating relationships compared to a 6 weeks online discussion group. The 6 HEARTS sessions cover: healthy and unhealthy relationships, launching new relationships, neurohealth, meeting and reconnecting, boundaries, and healthy endings. Participants who take part in this research study will be in this research study for three months. During this time, participants will be asked to complete two 30-minute and six 10-minute online surveys.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
92
HEARTS teaches autistic adults about friendship and healthy dating relationships. HEARTS is 6-sessions long and meets weekly over zoom. Each session is 90 minutes long.
A 90-minute discussion group will meet online weekly for 6 weeks to discuss friendships and healthy dating relationships for autistic adults.
Boston University CRC
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Hostile Automatic Thoughts (HATS)
The 25-item Hostile Automatic Thoughts (HAT) Scale is a self-report measure that assesses participants' ability to engage in perspective-taking related to perceived rejection and the extent to which they attribute hostile intentions to a person given an ambiguous situation. Completed by participant. For each item participants will select either: often, sometimes, or never. Higher scores are associated with higher levels of perceived rejection. Scale minimum possible score of 25, scale maximum possible score of 125. A higher score is less desirable and indicates more Hostile Automatic Thoughts.
Time frame: baseline, 12 weeks
Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire
The Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ), a 10-item self-report measure that assesses participants' capacity to be resilient when experiencing social rejection such as sending a text message and not getting a reply. Lower scores are associated with more resilience given rejection and thus are desirable. The minimum possible score is 20 and the maximum possible score is 720.
Time frame: baseline, 12 weeks
CGI-I
This was a binary variable that represents either improvement, or no improvement. To assess improvement, we used the Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement (CGI-I) which is a global measure of improvement and functioning, and measures satisfaction with quality of close relationships. Each of the 3 items are rated on a 7-point scale from: 1 (normal) to 7 (amongst the most severely ill patients). CGI-C scores range from 7 (very much worse) to 1 (very much improved). In this study, those who scored 1, 2 or 3 were considered "improved" and those who scored 4, 5, 6 or 7 were considered "not improved."
Time frame: baseline, 12 weeks
SMI
Social motivation was assessed via the Autistic Social Health Interview. The ASHI, adapted from the Social Motivation Interview (Elias \& White, 2020), assesses the following dimensions of social health: person's satisfaction with their interpersonal relationships, motivation to socialize, quantity of social relationships and encounters, and willingness to persist in social interaction. During the interview, the interviewer enquires about behaviors over the prior two weeks. The total ASHI score can range from 0-24, with higher scores indicative of greater overall social health.
Time frame: baseline, 12 weeks
Intervention Acceptability
An investigator developed self report 3-item scale to assess participants' feelings about whether HEARTS was informative, interesting, how likely participants would be to recommend it to other people and suggestions for how it could be improved will be used to assess this outcome. Participants will indicate their satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 represents highest satisfaction.
Time frame: 6 weeks
Content Acceptability, Week 1
This is an original measure with no scale name and with no subscales that assesses acceptability of intervention content. It is 29 items. Each item asks the participant how useful they found a piece of intervention content. Responses range from 1 to 10 with 1 representing "not at all useful" and 10 representing "very useful." The measure is scored by calculating the average across the items for a given week (Week 1, 3 items; Week 2, 6 items; Week 3, 4 items; Week 4, 6 items; Week 5, 5 items; Week 6, 5 items). The six scores representing each week are then averaged together for a total score. The total score range is 1 to 10.
Time frame: weekly during the 6 weeks of the interventions
Teacher Rating of Participant Engagement and Satisfaction
Teachers of the HEARTS intervention will complete a 3-item survey to assess their rating of participant engagement and satisfaction scores (PESS). Scores can range from 0 to 3 where 0 is low and 3 is high satisfaction. Higher scores are more favorable.
Time frame: weekly during the 6 weeks of the interventions
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