Research Project: Emotion Regulation in ASD

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@ COMPAQ: I understand your concern and appreciate the steps you take to not get deceived by fraud. It's actually quite impressive the steps you take (and I quite agree with the steps you take). I'm interested to know more about this specific fraud case (I always find them interesting), did the person say "free nintendo wii, but you must pay for postage" and then collect the postage money? Or was he just doing it as a tax cheat in the Ukraine?

Ah, it is unfortunate that the "thinking differently" question may be misinterpreted. It's trying to measure a technique called "cognitive reapprasial", where you re-evaluate an object, a situation, or any kind of cause of a troublesome emotion, in order for it to no longer cause a troublesome emotion. Fortunately there are several questions for each "construct", and they are there for this purpose, in case one of them are misinterpreted. After data collecting I'm going to assess the individual items and see how people responded, to decide which items I will use. If an item seems out of place or as if it has been misinterpreted then I will choose a different item. The reason is because as you probably are aware after taking the survey, the questionnaire is very long. So In the future if this measure because a measure of coping skills that other people use, they will want a shorter version.
As for some of the other questions like as you say there was one asking whether pursuing your special interest "can" help you feel better, but there are also other questions that ask if they do pursue their special interest. I have started looking at the data, and based on people's responses I believe I may decide to keep the question that reflects a person's behavioural frequency rather than whether it "can" work, because really I'm more interested in what people do when they are feeling troublesome emotions.

Ahhh I understand what you mean now (thanks for the mousetrap analogy! Made it all clear). I guess it comes down to everybody being different. Again I based the questionnaire on previous qualitative study where I did ask participants with ASD what they did to help regulate their emotions. If there were other strategies not covered in this study, then I had no basis to include them (or even know they existed). ASD is quite heterogeneous, and I guess it's unfortunate that I didn't capture more unique coping strategies, but again if I had no knowledge of them from the previous study (i.e. my participants with ASD didn't mention them) then I couldn't include them in a quantitative manner in this study.

Research has also shown that, in general, severe anxiety is quite detrimental to general functioning. I think the focus would be "in general" as of course there will always be people that this description doesn't fit. However overall in the literature, and in my own previous study, it's viewed as troublesome because it's an emotion they do not want to feel.

Yes I did mean that. So perhaps it's better to think about it, or it's better worded as: "I often feel that I wouldn't care if I was about to die" or "would due soon" in order to emphasise that it is future tense, not currently dead. So if you were to ask someone "how would you feel if I was going to kill you in 5 seconds?" the majority of people would say "pretty horrible, I would care a lot" where a person who is borderline suicidal may say "I wouldn't really care". It's not really asking "I wouldn't care how I would die" or the method of death, more does someone care whether they live or not, does someone value their own life? I've seen quite often people word it the way I worded it, but in hindsight I can see what you mean if someone was to read it literally (which I would have to consider given the population it's aimed at). So thanks for your feedback on this question, there were 2 other questions addressing suicidal ideation and so I'll take this into consideration when I'm analysing the data.

@ Robdemanc: Essentially it's because my PhD topic is on emotion regulation in adolescents and young adults with ASD. Due to the online method of this survey, I couldn't think of an easy way to get parental consent for adolescents under the age of 16, and so this was the minimum age. As for the maximum age, I originally wanted to not have a maximum in this survey, however my supervisors informed me that it is unethical to ask participants to complete the survey when I don't intend to use their data. I can't use their data, because the focus of the PhD topic is on adolescents and young adults. Originally the maximum age was going to be 25, but I decided young adulthood could be considered into 30.

[Bumped one last time on behalf of the OP - only 35 more participants required!]

I filled out by drug, that I'm taking sleeping pills, but actually it's just 3mg melatonine for the night.

Interessting questions, now I know that I have some trouble with regulatin emotions. I don't fluctuate in them all the time, no they are very constant, but I have difficulties changing then when I'm in a certain mood.

I would also like to see the results in the end.

Damiano I have a problem with the survey. Many questions ask something or other to do with special interests and feeling better. The closest I have to a special interest which I use to feel "more positive emotions" is collecting fosters every Friday between 6pm and 11pm. We call it a national sport, so how should I answer questions relating to special interests?

@ Raziel: Thanks for taking the survey! I'm planning on posting some of my findings here when I'm done

@ cherrycoke: A lot of the questions looking at special interests are asking if they make you feel better to pursue them. If you feel you don't have a special interest, or that your special interest doesn't help you feel better, the I believe the appropriate answer is disagree (or in the negative to whatever the scale is). In your case, I don't actually know what collecting fosters is is it a beer consumption thing?

Ugh, I took the whole thing then I read the rest of this thread, I am too old for the study! Anyway, I recognized the GAD test, the AQ test and the coping mechanisms worksheet. So sad that my answers won't count and I won't ever know what the answers meant.

@ Whirlingmind: Yes people from any country can take the survey.

@ Kirayng: sorry about that, the age requirements are stated on the first page of the survey though. Nonetheless I appreciate your interest and your participation! I'll be posting the results of the study up when it is finished so hopefully that will clarify what some of the answers meant

I only need 17 more participants!! So close XD

Hi everyone,

just letting everyone know that this survey is now closed and the winner of the prize draw has been contacted and has received their prize.

If anyone is interested in the results of this survey please pm me, or if enough people are interested I'll post it here on this board. We are currently trying to submit it to an academic journal.

I want to thank everyone who participated and who shared the survey with their friends! This helped me greatly in my research and I very much appreciate it!