Perspective: The role of diversity advisory boards in autism research

Abstract

In this perspective, we argue that the regular use of diversity advisory boards in autism research will improve the inclusivity and participation of marginalized groups in autism research and intervention development. We define a diversity advisory board as a representative group of community members, scholars, policymakers, and area experts that specifically discuss and examine research and interventions for accurate representation and consideration of underrepresented and marginalized identities such as racial, gender, sexual minorities, and dis/abilities who are often excluded from the research process. We present three arguments for forming and integrating diversity advisory boards in autism research and intervention development. First, diversity advisory boards would encourage scholars and interventionists to be intentional in considering how their intervention will work for culturally, racially, gendered, and dis/ability diverse groups. Second, diversity advisory boards will lead to increased diverse samples of autistic participants if members of the board are incentivized to support recruitment efforts from their local communities and networks. Finally, the regular use of diversity advisory boards will improve the research-to-practice gap by including a wider range of community members in the early development and implementation of autism interventions. Recommended actions researchers could take to select, maintain, and meaningfully engage a diversity advisory board are included in this perspective. Lay abstract This article argues that using groups of individuals that specifically focus on addressing issues with diversity in autism research and autism intervention development are key in ensuring that a greater amount of racial, ethnic, and gender diverse autistic individuals are included in the research and that the research is addressing the needs of these individuals and groups. We call these groups a diversity advisory board. A diversity advisory board will help improve diversity in autism research and intervention development by making sure that autism researchers (1) are intentional about addressing issues of diversity in their research and (2) are able to recruit a greater number of autistic individuals with diverse identities, and (3) by giving greater consideration to the context of diverse autistic individuals which will help autism-focused interventions work better in community settings. We give a short description of these arguments and ideas for how to form and use a diversity advisory board.