Assessing Effects of Occupational Therapists in Professional Teams on the Adaptive Functioning of Elementary School Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Tainan

Abstract

Special educational professional team is a type of intervention in Taiwan and it has been assisting students with special needs for nearly 20 years Such the team comprises professionals teachers and parents is organized with the aim of providing suitable suggestions resources and educational goals to assist students in adapting to school As an occupational therapist (OT) adaptive functioning is also the major concern as well Especially for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) adapting to most contexts including school is difficult; and most people believe that professional teams could help the students with ASD to adapt to school well However few studies have quantified the outcomes regarding the quality of services provided by special educational professional teams Moreover only rare studies have investigated effects of OT in professional teams in Taiwan Therefore this study investigated whether the adaptive functioning of elementary school students with ASD improves after services by OT in professional teams The researcher recruited 19 elementary school students with ASD who were serviced by OT in the professional teams across two semesters in one academic year The adaptive functioning of the recruited students was evaluated before and after the intervention by using the Vineland Adaptive Behavioral Scale-Chinese (VABS-C) and Sensory Profile-Chinese (SP-C) The data were analyzed mainly using the Wilcoxon signed rank test to determine the extent of improvement Additionally the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to analyze the relationships between the present situations such as frequency of services and the changes among adaptive functioning The results indicated that the standard scores of VABS-C did not show any significant difference although the improvements could be observed from raw scores In GAS students did have significant improvements through observation by OT In correlational analysis extracurricular treatments frequency of OT services and frequency of parents’ execution were correlated with differences of VABS-C significantly Particularly the difference of socialization standard score was significantly correlated with frequency of OT services However the improvements from the students were not obvious to detect by standard assessments during this study The reasons could be low frequency of services or poor communication The present study established an additional evidence-based background combining with current policy of the special educational professional team and used the findings to assist clinicians in promoting the intervention confidently

Date of Award	2017 Jan 25
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ling-Yi Lin (Supervisor)