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Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms and Bullying Victimization Among Children with Autism in the United States

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Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience more frequent bullying victimization compared to their neurotypical peers. This study used the 2011 Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services to examine associations between six Children’s Social Behavior Questionnaire (CSBQ) subscales and bullying victimization among 1057 children with ASD. Bivariate results showed significant correlations between each CSBQ subscale and more frequent bullying victimization. Yet results from multinomial logistic regression models indicated that after adjusting for all CSBQ subscales and covariates, two of the CSBQ subscales remained significantly associated with greater risk of bullying victimization: not being optimally tuned to the social situation, and resistance to changes. Implications for future research and efforts toward reducing bullying victimization among children with ASD are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The present research obtains bullying frequency from parents/guardians, which might reduce under-reporting of bullying due to children’s distortion in perception.

  2. Further details are available at www.cdc.gov/nchs/slaits/cshcn.htm and www.cdc.gov/nchs/slaits/spds.htm.

  3. The authors used multinomial logistic regression instead of ordinal logistic regression because preliminary analyses indicated the proportional odds assumption was violated.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jessica Rast and Andrew Whitehead for helpful discussion of the Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, 126 Stubbs Hall, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Danequa L. Forrest, Rhiannon A. Kroeger & Samuel Stroope

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  1. Danequa L. Forrest
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  2. Rhiannon A. Kroeger
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  3. Samuel Stroope
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Correspondence to Danequa L. Forrest.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Descriptive statistics for CSBQ subscales for analytic sample
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Forrest, D.L., Kroeger, R.A. & Stroope, S. Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms and Bullying Victimization Among Children with Autism in the United States. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 560–571 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04282-9

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