Evaluation of an Autism Training in a Much-Needed Context: The Case of France.

Abstract

Background: Autistic people in France have called for community education to reduce autism stigma. As such, training is needed to help university students appreciate autistic peers and autistic people they may work with in their future careers.

Methods: We adapted an autistic-affirming training from a training developed in other cultural contexts and evaluated it with 107 university students in France using a pretest-post-test design.

Results: Questionnaire responses suggested that our brief online training helped improve attitudes toward inclusion, autism knowledge, and stigma among future educators and psychologists in France. Participants' open-ended definitions of autism revealed increased alignment with the neurodiversity movement after training.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that wider-scale autistic-led adaptations of autism trainings like the one described in this report could begin to ameliorate autism stigma in France.