Research Proposal Sample on Early Intensive Intervention for Children with ASD

Introduction and summary of the literature review

Of late, the number of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder especially in primary school has for the past years increased. Research shows in every 68 school children, one of them is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Due to its increase, most researchers are now interested in finding out more about this disorder (Ratcliffe, Wong, Dossetor, & Hayes, 2015). It is believed that early intensive behavioral intervention can be helpful for children in school diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. However, before comprehending on it prevalence, it is of great importance to understand what Autism Spectrum Disorder mean.

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Well, ASD is a type of development as well as neurological disorder. Generally speaking, this type of disorder affects the way in which a person acts or interact with other people, learns and even method of communication. Too often, Autism spectrum Disorder expresses itself in early childhood, and lasts throughout an individual's life, especially if left unattended (Bambara, Cole, Kunsch, Tsai, &Ayad, 2016). By relating with other children, an individual can learn how to speak, and in the process, the effects of Autism spectrum Disorder decreases. Also, ASD includes Asperger syndrome together with persuasive development disorders (Wong, et al., 2015).

Even though some research emphasize that access not only to mental but also pediatric services are helpful for those children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, there is clear evidence concerning this aspects. However, some intervention has demonstrated to improve positive as well as useful behaviors among autistic children. One of them is Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention. Sadly, even with the presence of these interventions, pediatric and mental services, the majority of children with Autism spectrum disorders have no access to these amenities (Estes, et al., 2015). Up to date, their little information respect with causes of ASDs. Instead, people have varying speculation ranging from genetics to environmental aspects.

In modern society, there exists no standard treatment for ASD, and this leaves a wide gap in research. Despite having no one single intervention suitable for all autistic children, intervention follows by attending to each autistic child with a specific intervention/program approach suitable for them. However, research has shown that one intervention that has shown a growing rise and solid grounding is Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention. Generally speaking, EIBI refers to applied behavioral analysis and majorly focuses on the children below five years of age. EIBI applies the principle of behavior analysis to boosts positive as well as useful behaviors among children having ASDs (Bambara, Cole, Kunsch, Tsai, &Ayad, 2016). Subsequently, undesirable behaviors including aggression, self-injury together with tantrums will significantly decrease.

Other symptoms include challenges in conversing, inability to see someone straight in the eyes when talking and many more. On the other side, people who have ASD are characterized by repetitive behaviors as well as restricted interests. More often, they take time to put things in the right order while others keep on repeating the same sentence again and again (Zwaigenbaum, et al., 2015). Currently, healthcare settings provide check-ups for a child's development. If it happens that the child is diagnosed with the disorder, the specialists recommend a comprehensive evaluation. Moreover, some medication has been proposed to help in reducing related symptoms such as depression, trouble focusing as well as seizures.

Leaving children with Autism spectrum with no therapy, stimulation, interaction nor education stagnates their mental capability, therefore, intellectual disability. On the other hand, an inappropriate environment characterized by bullying is likely to affect the children. It is of great importance to note that this damage caused by inappropriate childhood environment can be permanent and these challenges range from behavioral to cognitive issues to sensory issues (Buescher, Cidav, Knapp, &Mandell, 2014). For this reason, there is need to provide early intensive behavioral intervention strategies to address the problem early enough; otherwise, the child will fail to realize their potential especially when it comes to academic and other life aspects. The main objectives of this work are to examine the effectiveness of the early intensive intervention. Besides, this document examines the age group who benefit most from the intervention. Last but most important, it will outline some of the methods that can be adopted to improve the usefulness of the intervention.

Literature Review

2014 research reveals that children with Autism Spectrum Disorders have significantly benefited from an early intervention program. That is to say; desirable behaviour has increased while undesirable characteristics have meaningfully reduced. Most noteworthy, most of the children who benefited from this program are those who started the intervention program when they were below two years (Christensen, et al., 2016). Most noteworthy, meta-analysis conducted in 2009 claimed that Early Intensive Behaviors Intervention is the most effective program among all that have been proposed. For this reason, experts highly recommend the intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. As well, parents are encouraged to initiate the program commence the program early or to say, once the child is diagnosed with ASDs.

Most noteworthy, already done research has yielded positive results giving hope not only to the medical professionals but also the entire community (Bambara, Cole, Kunsch, Tsai, &Ayad, 2016). With early intensive behavioral intervention, most parents have recorded that their children have significantly improved despite the few challenges that the intervention is facing in its implementation. On the other hand, children are naturally complex and differ from one other. For this reason, there is a need to develop a range of programs within the intervention to suit a range of children suffering from ASDs. As well, more research is needed to clarify the effectiveness of critical elements within the intervention (Kucharczyk, et al., 2015).

Treatment program

Parents, caregivers, as well as guardians, always find a hard time when choosing an early intervention program for their children. More often, the parents are expected to design their own their implementation program. After that, the healthcare specialists will help the implement the proposed program (Koegel, Koegel, Ashbaugh, & Bradshaw, 2014). Well, this intervention includes 20-40 hours a week, and the whole program will take approximately three years. Parents, as well as guardians, are included in the process. Each therapy is introduced one by one to ensure maximum exposure. The program will include the following tasks;

Evaluation design

The main purpose of this project is to examine the success as well as the effectiveness of early intensive behavioral intervention among autistic school children. On the other hand, it purposely examines those children who have benefit most from the intervention. This is in respect to age, gender and beyond. Moreover, the evaluation design involves both qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. Qualitative research is used to examine people understanding of fundamental reasons, opinions as well as motivations relative to EIBI intervention (Ratcliffe, Wong, Dossetor, & Hayes, 2015). For the sake of this research, the qualitative research includes interviewing, use of focus groups and even administering questioners. This research aims to interview about 200 people comprising teachers, parents, guardians, healthcare professionals as well as some children who have benefited from the intervention. As well, the research is scheduled to take a month and participants are selected randomly while keeping gender balance in mind. Generally speaking, qualitative research will help this project in uncovering trends, and opinions respect with EIBI.

After qualitative evaluation, quantitative research follows. Well, quantitative research is often used to enumerate the problem. It involves generating numerical data that are later transformed into useful statistics. In the section, participant's opinions, attitudes, and behaviour are quantified. Unlike qualitative research, quantitative methods employ measurable data to deduce dependable results. There are various quantitative data collection methods including mobile surveys, online surveys, longitudinal studies, systematic observations and many more (Volkmar, et al., 2014). Most noteworthy, qualitative research for this paper includes extensive use of already published documents. Subsequently, the data obtained from this method is compared to the data obtained from qualitative research. Apart from responses obtained from participants, it will be of great importance whoever who is concerned with data collection to observe by himself. Nevertheless, this is only applicable if data is collected from home or school settings. Last but not least, intervention needs improvement towards the actual treatment of autism spectrum disorders.

Statement of significance

There are several teaching strategies as well as intervention for children autism that has been proposed. However, implementation of these programs especially in school settings has been faced with lots of challenges. Some of the barriers to ASD intervention includes the incomplete development of the intervention, frequent changes, and inadequate evidence of intervention effectiveness as well as poor fitting. For this reason, there is a need for any intervention to include comprehensive manuals especially on how to implement the intervention. This includes essential components to ensure the effectiveness of the intervention (Christensen, et al., 2016).

On the other hand, it must include studies that try to examine long-term, practical results. Subsequently, the manual ought to include innovation research that allows the researchers to propose new ways of making the intervention more effective. Based on the above comments, early intensive behavioral intervention for children with Autism Spectrum have proved to yield some promising results so far. With all things set in place, EIBI will significantly improve positive as well as useful behaviors among autistic children (Bradshaw, Steiner, Gengoux, &Koegel, 2015). As well, the intervention decreases behaviour such as aggression, self-injury, and tantrums.

References

Bambara, L. M., Cole, C. L., Kunsch, C., Tsai, S. C., &Ayad, E. (2016). A peer-mediated intervention to improve the conversational skills of high school students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 27, 29-43.

Bradshaw, J., Steiner, A. M., Gengoux, G., &Koegel, L. K. (2015). Feasibility and effectiveness of very early intervention for infants at-risk for autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Journal of A...