Historical Perspective / National Standards Project, Phase 1

Evidence-based practice has become the standard in the fields of medicine, psychology, education, and allied health. The idea that decision makers should know how much research supports a treatment has also been important in the field of autism.

For example, in 1999, the New York State Department of Health, Early Intervention Division, published clinical practice guidelines concerning the treatment of very young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In 2001, the National Research Council’s Committee on Educational Interventions for Children with Autism published a report that attempted to identify the best available treatment programs.

In spite of progress made to date, the existing clinical guidelines are limited in several ways:

• These previous guidelines are now outdated because reviews were completed before the turn of the 21st century.
• The reviews did not include all educational and behavioral treatment studies for a broad age range or a variety of ASD diagnosis.
• Evidence-based practice guidelines have evolved.

The National Standards Report addressed these limitations in the following ways:

• We completed a thorough review of the educational and behavioral intervention literature that targets the core characteristics and associated symptoms of ASD that was published between 1957 and the fall of 2007.
• We provided information about intervention effectiveness based on age, diagnostic groups, and intervention targets.
• We tried to make the process completely transparent. We have presented information and solicited feedback from parents and professionals at national and international conferences. We have also received input from a cross-disciplinary group of experts in order to maintain the highest levels of transparency with many professional groups who service children with ASD.