Frequently Asked Questions About the Research Autism Website

This page aims to answer some of the questions we are most frequently asked about this website.

If you can't find the answer to a question you would like to ask please email info@researchautism.net and we will do our best to help you.

Who runs this site?

This website is owned and run by the Research Autism information service, which is part of the National Autistic Society.

It was previously run by Research Autism, the only UK charity exclusively dedicated to research into interventions in autism.

What is the point of this site?

This site has been designed to provide you with information about autism and related issues.

It has also been designed to act as a gateway to some of the other resources on autism, both here in the UK and overseas.

This website has NOT been designed

to tell people which intervention/s, if any, to use. That is a decision for the individual with autism (and/or his or her carers) to make

to prove or disprove a given intervention. Our aim is to report on the scientific evidence behind each intervention, irrespective of whether that evidence is positive, negative or mixed.

to promote or to denigrate any particular group of therapies. So we look equally carefully at behavioural, pharmacological, biomedical and other types of interventions

to make money. This website exists to provide independent, accurate and helpful information about interventions, not to sell you products or services.

What is the best intervention for me or my child?

We regret that we cannot advise you which intervention, if any, you should use. Each person with autism is different, with different needs and abilities.

The medical information published on this site is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your GP or medical advisor. We hope that by providing this information, you will gain a better understanding of autism, including the range of interventions (treatments, therapies and services) which are available.

Any information published on this site about medicines and drugs, or about other forms of treatment, has been written by non-medically qualified individuals, unless we specifically state otherwise. Any such information should be therefore be treated with care.

Where can I find detailed information about interventions?

We provide a reasonable amount of information about each of the most commonly used interventions.

If you need more information about an intervention from this list, you can usually find this in the reading section for that intervention or you can visit the websites listed in the links section for that intervention. For an example, please see the entry on Early Intensive Behavioural Interventions

We hope to provide more information about other interventions as resources allow.

Why don't you have any information about this intervention (whatever it is) ?

There are hundreds and hundreds of different interventions which are designed to help people with autism spectrum disorders, which makes describing them all difficult, especially as new interventions are coming along all the time.

We try to list all of the interventions we have heard of, including any acronyms and synomyms, in our alphabetic listing.

If you know of an intervention we have not yet listed, please let us know by emailing info@researchautism.net. Thank you.

Can we advertise on your site?

No. We do not accept any kind of advertising as this could compromise the integrity of the site.

We do sometimes provide information about the work of other organisations but only where we believe this is in the interests of our visitors and we do not accept payment when we do so.

Can we link to your site?

You do not need to ask our permission to link to this site but, if you do make a link to this site, please let us know by emailing info@researchautism.net

Will you provide a link to my site?

We regret that we are unable to link to every website which provides information about autism spectrum disorders and related issues because we simply don't have the resources to identify, add and then maintain the links.

We have therefore adopted the following criteria for inclusion of links to external websites

Sites of national or international importance, such as the National Autistic Society site or the British Association of Play Therapists site. In practice this means we don't normally link to the local branches of autism societies or to individual play therapists.
Sites which provide significant information about key issues, such as the Autism Research Institute site which provides detailed information about a wide range of therapies and treatments.
Sites which are the only source of information about a particular issue, such as the Autism Treatment Center of America site which is the only source of detailed information about the Son-Rise programme.
Portals which provide links to a wide range of other autism resources, such as the Autism Services Directory.
Miscellaneous sites which we consider to be useful sources of information to our visitors.

Where we are unable to link to a site, we suggest you contact the other sites listed in the links section of this site.