Peer-reviewed article
Creating a caregiver education program with chinese caregivers of autistic children: A community engaged process.
Yang Y, Pan Q, Xin Y, Liu X, Qiu H et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study explored what Chinese caregivers of autistic children want from education programs by conducting focus groups with 14 caregivers. Participants discussed the content they wanted to learn and gave feedback on prototype educational videos. The research found that caregiver education programs should be designed with input from the people who will use them, considering both what they want to learn and how they prefer to receive the information.
Key points
- Study involved 14 Chinese caregivers of autistic children in two focus groups
- First focus group identified desired content for caregiver education
- Second focus group provided feedback on two prototype educational videos
- Analysis revealed three emergent themes regarding content and two regarding delivery method
- Recommendation that online caregiver education should be co-developed with intended users
Limitations
This is a small qualitative study with 14 participants from China, so findings may not represent all Chinese caregivers or be generalizable to other contexts. The study does not evaluate the effectiveness of any caregiver education program, only what caregivers want.
Abstract
Despite a growing body of research highlighting the advantages of caregiver education for both autistic individuals and their caregivers, little is known about what Chinese caregivers of autistic children may want and need within caregiver education. In this qualitative study, we invited 14 Chinese caregivers of autistic children to share their needs and perspectives on the content and delivery of a caregiver education program. Specifically, we conducted two focus groups. The first focus group asked caregivers about the desired content of caregiver education. The second focus group asked for feedback on two prototype videos created based on the first focus group. We used reflexive thematic analysis, revealing three emergent themes regarding content and two themes regarding the delivery method. The study results show that the content and modality of online caregiver education programs should be created by solicitating intended user input throughout the development process.