A Meta-Analysis of Single-Subject Studies on Social Stories Interventions Focused on Communication Skills for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of social stories interventions focused on communication skills for individuals with autism spectrum disorder through Tau-U analysis and to determine the quality of studies through WWC(2017) criteria. By searching studies on social stories interventions published in domestic academic journals since 2000, a total of 21 studies were chosen based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The chosen studies were analyzed by major variables and the characteristics of studies were examined. The effect size was examined by obtaining the Tau-U and Cohen's d value. The main results were as follows. First, the effect size of the intervention of social stories focused on communication skills for students with autism spectrum disorder was medium. Second, the effect size for each variable (eg. school levels, gender, interventioner, length of intervention, type of materials) was also medium or above. Last, as the qualitative level analysis, 16% of unconstrained midfoot and 84% of constrained satisfactory results were shown. In addition, some limitations and suggestions for further studies were considered.