Self-Set Goals: Autistic Adults Facilitating Their Self-Determination Through Digitally Mediated Social Stories

Personalized and practical support can facilitate autistic adults' independence and agency and can enable enhanced self-determination while influencing quality of life. Notwithstanding, traditional supports or interventions for autistic adults typically seek to address perceived challenges associated with autism, rather than identify what the autistic person wants support with. In this research, we explored the potential to empower autistic people by attaining their own self-set goals with the support of digitally mediated Social Stories.

We conducted a pre/post quasiexperimental design to investigate the usefulness and effectiveness of digitally mediated Social Stories for autistic adults to support the attainment of their self-set goals. Thirty-three autistic participants self-set goals and self-developed Social Stories using a digital application. We collected closeness-to-goal measures at baseline and after 2 weeks of reading their digitally mediated Social Stories themselves and we compared them with a control condition. We then evaluated the goals participants were interested in. The autistic adults also evaluated the usefulness of the intervention for them.

Over 2 weeks, the use of self-set goals, combined with a digitally mediated Social Story, elicited a statistically significant increase in closeness-to-goal ratings with a large effect size. The majority of participants reported that digitally mediated Social Stories were an appropriate and effective form of self-support. Our analysis of the participants' goals indicated that autistic adults predominantly identified a need for support with increasing nonsocial behaviors.

Self-developed digitally mediated Social Stories can effectively support autistic adults in reaching their self-set goals. Digitally mediated Social Stories can support reflection on one's goals, increase commitment toward goals, break down tasks into meaningful parts, as well as create meaningful predictions for autistic adults. Thus, digitally mediated Social Stories have the potential to empower autistic adults to self-support reaching self-set goals.