For those shopping for support for their efforts to help an individual child with autism, there appears to be a small industry for subscription service companies developing rapidly on the Internet. I mentioned one, Autism Pro, in early March. More recently I’ve explored TeachTown, which bills itself thusly:
TeachTown is dedicated to using scientifically validated practices that incorporate the latest academic research in the development of our products. Our programs are based on existing interventions such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) that have been proven effective in the treatment of autism and our intervention tools and training programs are being validated through ongoing rigorous research studies funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
I’m not well-informed enough to evaluate these programs fully. They are, of course, proprietary so they don’t give away access for an appreciable time (I used Austism Pro’s trial period, to be sure), making it difficult to assess them. However, I am glad to note that TeachTown includes several people who are active researchers, giving them a leg up simply because they have to know the basic skepticism that undergirds making evidence-based decisions.
Still, I can’t endorse these services without more information.
As Maureen Conroy noted in a presentation yesterday at this meeting I’m attending, it’s difficult to apply the gold-standards of evidence (random assignment of participants to experimental and control conditions with outcomes measured on multiple trustworthy measures of important behavior) in autism. Still, it’s important to get as far along that path as we can. I want to return to this topic for a later post….
Anyway, check on TeachTown. Link back to the earlier EBDBlog post on Autism Pro. I’d welcome comments from folks who have experiences with either of these or with other similar services.
Sphere: Related Content
Here are my thoughts on each…
Autism Pro — it is not ‘evidence-based’ — it considers FloorTime to be equally supported by research as others — I have yet to read one bit of research (true research, mind you — rather than someone’s anectdotal report of how great it worked!) that supports Floortime as something that is effective. I read that, and dismissed Autism Pro as simply someone capitalizing on the desperation so many parents feel when they find out their child(ren) is/are diagnosed with Autism. Their only citations are not peer refereed journals, but books published by the creators/promulgators of the treatment — this is not evidence-based…I think my biggest concern with AutismPro is that it appears to bill itself as an alternative to professional guidance — it does have a disclaimer stating that it should be used in conjunction with professionals, but this disclaimer is buried in the FAQ page, approximately 2500 words deep…(most people probably don’t read that far)–they’re so excited to finally have something that ‘combats the waitlisting they’ve suffered’…
TeachTown, on the other hand has much more basis in Applied Behavior Analysis– in fact, it describes what ABA is (including the distinction that DTT is not ABA, but rather, a part of ABA) — this alone engenders my support initially - as most people informed by popular media think the terms are synonymous. Teachtown has an entire Research page littered with citations…but I can’t find the reference page. If they don’t have a reference page, the citations aren’t worth much(Pritchard, 2007)
Oops — I submitted accidently before I finished…as you can see, I have a citation — but what research was done in that citation? You have no idea, you don’t know where it was cited, what it was about or anything! TeachTown should have a reference page (and perhaps they do, and I can’t find it)…they do, however, provide a link to one research study that was published (and they provide full text as well — it doesn’t get easier than that!) — so that alone puts them ahead of the competition, in my book. However, if they want to have a solid endorsement as ‘research-based’, I do feel they should have a reference page, so that those of us who don’t believe until we’ve read peer-reviewed, can delve into all the studies.
Hi,
I’m a future special education teacher who found EBDblog through Mrs. Ris’ blog. Hope you’ll take the time to read mine and include me in your blogroll if you like what you read. I just started the blog today, but hopefully my two entries are enough for you to see who I am.
Thanks for all you do!
Josh, I had much the same reaction about a comparison of the two alternatives. They illustrate an important idea: What sells is not necessarily a metric of what works.
Do you know of other similar sites?
(Hi, Erin. I’ll skip over to your site sometime soon!)