Abstract
Background: Increasing efforts have been focused on providing a quality education for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) after identifying them at an early stage. Preschool teachers play a major role in the main ASD identification system as they represent the gatekeepers to identify and refer any children suspected of ASD to specialists. However, there is little literature available on the ability of preschool teachers of their perception regarding this role.Aim: The main objective of this study is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of an educational module to identify children with ASD (EMASD). The second objective is to assess the initial impact of the EMASD on improving preschool teacher’s ability to identify children with ASD in a normal school.Method: This pilot study will examine the feasibility of the randomised controlled trial (RCT) using EMASD as an intervention. The intervention will be ten weekly group-based sessions designed to improve the knowledge, belief, identification skills, and self-efficacy to identify children with ASD among Yemeni preschool teachers. The teachers will be randomly assigned to the intervention group that will receive the EMASD and the control group without any intervention. The feasibility will be determined based on the effectiveness as measured by questionnaires and open-ended questions. General linear measurement (GLM) will be used to compare the outcome scores in the questionnaire between the two groups and within the group whereas thematic analysis will be used to analyse the open-ended questions. Expected outcomes: The findings from this study will give critical empirical data about the feasibility of EMASD.Discussion: EMASD has the potential to increase the ability of preschool teachers to detect children with ASD. The findings from the feasibility study will be utilised to improve the research protocol of the randomised controlled trial and to ensure a better design of an intervention for a larger powered trial in the future.
Feasibility study of a randomised controlled trial to investigate the effectiveness of using a humanoid robot to improve the social skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (Kaspar RCT): a study protocol