School counselors' use of the combination social storiesTM and video modeling intervention for social skills development of students diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders: a qualitative criticism of the perceptions of multidisciplinary team members

Autism Disorder and related disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified, are collectively known as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). These disorders are currently the fastest growing diagnosed disorders among children and have been found in 110 in 10,000 individuals. Individuals with ASD are delayed in social development according to diagnostic criteria. To address the social development delays of students with ASD, two research-based interventions have been developed: Social Stories^TM and video modeling. Social Stories^TM uses a specific combination of sentences to describe a social situation or a social skill in story form. Video modeling is an isolation of social skill steps delivered through a video medium to model the social skill. The purpose of this study was to combine Social Stories^TM and video modeling (combined intervention) and investigate the perceptions of educational multidisciplinary team members (school counselors, parents, teachers) regarding the combination intervention for the development of social behavior in students with ASD. School counselors participating in this study delivered the combination Social Stories^TM and video modeling intervention to student participants with ASD. Then, the perceptions of the school-based multidisciplinary team members of this combination intervention were collected through qualitative surveys and analyzed to develop the Qualitative Criticism.

This Qualitative Criticism describes, interprets, and evaluates the pragmatic use of the combination of the Social Stories^TM and video modeling intervention with students with ASD in schools from the perspectives of the school counselors, teachers, and parents of these students. Organized by case, team members of each of the student participants reflected on the strengths and weaknesses of these interventions for that student. Across cases, comments were analyzed by role (i.e., parent, teacher, school counselor). Then, these roles were combined into a cross-case analysis of multidisciplinary team perspectives of the usefulness of these interventions for students with ASD. Pre-test and post-test data were collected using teachers' responses to the Vineland II Teacher Rating Form (V-II TRF) and the Summary of Observations section on the V-II TRF to triangulate findings grounded in the qualitative data. Findings suggested that parents, teachers, and school counselors supported the use of these interventions for several reasons. The combination intervention increased opportunities for repetition of the target skills; for visual learning through written words in stories, cartoons, and videos; and for individualization to meet the varying needs and interests of students with ASD. The intervention was also developmentally appropriate, engaging, and fun for students. In addition, when the school counselor collaborated with parents and teachers through the intervention, the parents and teachers seemed to be more knowledgeable about the intervention, and supported these students to use the intervention and generalize the target skills. While V-II TRF scores did not show statistically significant gains to confirm the multidisciplinary team members' support for the combination intervention, clinical significance was found in the domain scores of Communication and Daily Living, and in the Composite score measuring overall adaptive functioning.