Therapies for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Results
Chapter 3 presents the results of our systematic review. Each category of intervention
includes first an overview of the content of the literature as a whole, including the range of study
designs used, outcomes assessed and participants included. The summary of the literature
provides further discussion and analysis, focusing primarily on those studies that received either
a good or fair quality rating. Overview tables document the interventions included, availability of
literature by study design, diagnostic approaches, timing of final outcome assessments,
geographic location of study populations, and final numbers of participants with autism spectrum
disorders (ASDs) for each intervention section (Tables 9, 14, 16, 23, 25).
Studies that received a good or fair quality rating and include a comparison group
(randomized controlled trial (RCT), controlled trial, or prospective or retrospective cohort study)
also are described in more detailed summary tables in the relevant section of text. For
information on studies not included in the summary tables, please see the evidence table in
Appendix C; for information on quality scores for each study, see Appendix H.
Article Selection
Of the entire group of 4,120 citations, 714 required full text review (Figure 2). For the full
article review, two reviewers read each article and decided whether it met our inclusion criteria,
using a Full Text Inclusion/Exclusion form. Of the 714 full text articles reviewed, we retained
183 papers (comprising 159 unique studies) and excluded 531 papers. Reasons for article
exclusion are listed in Appendix D.
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