Empowering Voices: Fostering Reflective Dialogue and Redefining Research Dynamics in Participatory Approaches With the Autistic Community

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. five authors of this publication are identified as autistic in the project.

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Horton, E., Goldschmied, A. Z., Knops, M. J., Brownhill, L. A., Bycroft, A., Lloyd, A., Tones, D., Wiltshire, B., Toro, C. T., & Jutley-Neilson, J. (2024). Empowering Voices: Fostering Reflective Dialogue and Redefining Research Dynamics in Participatory Approaches With the Autistic Community. Journal of Participatory Research Methods, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.122455

Publication date: 9 Oct 2024 Added to AutiHub: 18 Jul 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
Publisher source (DOI) Full text OpenAlex source

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Authors

Publication authors
10
Publication authors identified as autistic
5 / 10 (50.0%)
  1. Ellie Horton
  2. Anita Z Goldschmied *
  3. Max J. Knops *
  4. Laura A. Brownhill *
  5. Alice Bycroft
  1. Anthony Lloyd
  2. Daniel Tones *
  3. Beth Wiltshire *
  4. Carla T Toro
  5. Jagjeet Jutley-Neilson

Abstract

Within this brief report, the authors, who are mostly neurodivergent and a majority autistic, outline some of the challenges and historical failings of participatory research with the autistic community. There is an urgent need to explore creative ways to ensure that research engages with autistic people in an active, meaningful, and valuable way (Den Houting et al., 2021; Fletcher-Watson et al., 2019; Garfield & Yudell, 2019). The authors detail the process of using reflective dialogue to explore the participatory research group’s personal experiences of mental health at a university. The participatory group later presented their experiences at a webinar attended by more than 200 strategic and supporting staff from UK universities. The group found reflective dialogue to be useful in addressing many of the failings of participatory research with the autistic community, such as redressing power imbalances and finding it to be personally beneficial and validating. The authors detail how this might be implemented and argue that this approach has valuable applications within autism research and beyond and should be explored further.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 2 Oct 2026 16:12.

Cited references
46
With a DOI
41
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
5
14 / 46 (30.4%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
0 / 46 (0.0%)
References with detected author names
46 / 46 (100.0%)
Without detected author names
0
Without a structured title
0
Without a stable identifier
3
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
1
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
143
From DOI or external metadata
143
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
0
83 / 143 (58.0%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 60 / 143 (42.0%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
29 / 143 (20.3%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 29 / 83 (34.9%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 19 / 123 (15.4%).
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