Welcome to Autism PROMNET! Description of group and general guidelines

[Williams, Zachary J]

Hello Autism PROMNET Members,

First of all, welcome to Autism PROMNET, a new Google Group to connect autism researchers, clinicians, and stakeholders interested in using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to study or characterize autism. This is a continuation of our Special Interest Group (SIG) at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) 2022 Annual Meeting in Austin, TX. entitled “Improving Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) in Autism Research: Bridging the Gap Between Advanced Psychometric Techniques & Stakeholder Priorities!” 

We thank you very much for your interest in the mission of Autism PROMNET, which is to promote valid and meaningful outcome measurement in autism research and clinical practice. This group will serve as a general listserv for researchers to discuss all things related to outcome measurement in autism research, and the PROM SIG leaders (Hillary Schiltz and Zack Williams) will use the group to provide updates on SIG-related initiatives (more details to come soon). To post to the group, simply send an email to autism-...@googlegroups.com from the email you joined the group with. We encourage members to use the group for anything related to outcome measurement in autism research (i.e., sharing new relevant research findings or ongoing projects, looking for collaborators, sharing relevant job postings, soliciting opinions and recommendations related to PROMs used to capture X construct, psychometrics/software questions, etc.)

We were very impressed and excited by the level of interest in this topic at INSAR 2022! We know that there may be even more people who were not able to attend our SIG in person who are interested in contributing to Autism PROMNET and its initiatives. Thus, to help grow the Autism PROMNET community, we’re asking you the members to please share this group with others in your networks who may be interested in joining (request to join at this link). There are no requirements for membership beyond an interest in learning more about outcome measure development and validation in the context of autism research and clinical practice. Please note that you do not have to be an expert in measure development, psychometrics, or clinical assessment to join and contribute to the Autism PROMNET community. 

We hope that you find this group useful to connect with other researchers and work to improve outcome measurement in the autism field. If you would like to directly contact the group leadership (Hillary Schiltz and Zack Williams) with any questions or comments, please email autism....@gmail.com.

All the best,

Hillary Schiltz (UCLA) & Zack Williams (Vanderbilt University)

Autism PROMNET Administrators

Co-Leaders: INSAR SIG on Patient-reported Outcome Measures in Autism Research

[Zachary Williams]

Sorry for the formatting on the last email—see below for a hopefully easier to read version with the same content.

- Zack