News and Notes from The Johnson Center
Q & A: In conducting research, do you only need children with autism to participate?
JCCHD | Mon, June 04, 2012 | [Q and A ][Research]
One of the biggest challenges in performing research is finding the right participants and enough of them to complete the needed studies. Healthy children without an autism diagnosis are critical to our research. While we have great success in recruiting children on the autism spectrum, we still have an urgent need for typically-developing children to serve as the control groups for comparison in our studies. We need healthy boys and girls ages 2-8, both those with and those without a sibling with an ASD, to participate in our studies.
These healthy participants greatly increase the quality of our research by providing biological samples to compare to samples from children with autism; the more information we have, the better the study.
All research participants receive compensation and a “super hero” t-shirt when they complete their participation. Most of our studies require a minimal time-commitment and participation usually can be completed in one visit.
If you’ve helped us with our research at The Johnson Center, we encourage you to let other families know, as word-of-mouth outreach has proven to be our most effective method for spreading the word. And this can be rewarding for you as well – we host a monthly drawing for people who refer others here to participate. (You could win a gift card for a local restaurant, Amazon, iTunes—or even an iPad2!)
This summer is a great time to help out with an important cause. One mother wrote to us about a great conversation she had with her son following their research participation. They discussed the importance of giving your time to help find needed answers for those who may be facing challenges. Her son was very proud of his participation, and used part of the compensation he received to pay for a play date at the arcade with a classmate who has ASD.
Click here to read more about a few of our ongoing studies. Please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you are interested in participating, and be sure to tell your friends to give us your name when they come in, so that you will be registered for one of our great prizes.
