Brief Report: School Anxiety, School Attendance and School Refusal/Distress Following an Autism-Specific Parent-Mediated Intervention for Anxiety in Preschoolers

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Adams, D., Malone, S., Dargue, N., Rodgers, J., Simpson, K., Wicks, R., & Rapee, R. (2025). Brief Report: School Anxiety, School Attendance and School Refusal/Distress Following an Autism-Specific Parent-Mediated Intervention for Anxiety in Preschoolers. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-025-06828-6

Publication date: 12 Apr 2025 Added to AutiHub: 24 Sep 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
Publisher source (DOI) OpenAlex source

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Authors

Publication authors
7
Autistic authors reported by the publication
Number not specified
  1. Dawn Adams
  2. Stephanie Malone
  3. Nicole Dargue
  4. Jacqui Rodgers
  1. Kate Simpson
  2. Rachelle Wicks
  3. Ron Rapee

Abstract

PURPOSE: Autistic children have an increased likelihood of experiencing anxiety, even in the preschool years. Studies evaluating anxiety interventions in autistic children have tended to focus upon home or community settings. This study expands upon previous work to evaluate whether a parent-mediated intervention for autistic preschool children's anxiety impacts later school anxiety and school attendance. METHOD: Data for this study comes from a randomised controlled trial of an autism-specific program designed to reduce and/or prevent anxiety in autistic preschoolers; CLK-CUES. In addition to pre- and post-group anxiety measures, the trial included data from parents and teachers one year later, once the children started school. Teacher-reported school anxiety and parent-reported school attendance data were available for the CLK-CUES (n = 15) and control group (n = 13). FINDINGS: Children whose parents received CLK-CUES had lower levels of separation anxiety in school and significantly lower non-attendance rates than the control group. This was predominantly due to a significant between-group difference in the number of days missed due to school refusal/distress. INTERPRETATION: Findings indicate promise for this autism-specific anxiety program to reduce school anxiety and support school attendance in young autistic children. Further research with larger samples and an extended follow-up is warranted.

Bibliography cited by this reference

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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 01:01.

Cited references
39
With a DOI
38
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
1
0 / 39 (0.0%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
1 / 39 (2.6%)
References with detected author names
38 / 39 (97.4%)
Without detected author names
1
Without a structured title
1
Without a stable identifier
1
References with raw author names still to review
1
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
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
169
From DOI or external metadata
169
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
6
93 / 169 (55.0%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 76 / 169 (45.0%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
0 / 169 (0.0%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 0 / 93 (0.0%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 0 / 125 (0.0%).
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