Evidence-based practices in autism: Where we are now and where we need to go

Abstract

As shown in Chap. 1 (see Fig. 14.1 and Volkmar in press), publication on autism has increased significantly in recent years. We undertook additional analyses to determine whether this increase reflected greater interest in autism more generally or included a specific interest in autism treatments. We conducted a literature search of the terms autism and autism and treatment for the years 1990-2008. Unlike the search described in Chap. 1, which relied on the Medline database, the search described here relied on the Ovid PsycINFO database, which we felt would capture the full range of publications related to treatment. Differences and recommendations for using different databases are discussed in an appendix to this chapter. When conducting the searches, two filters were used; the all journals filter limited results to articles published in journals and the year filter limited returns to each specific year. The number of articles about autism and those specifically about autism treatments published in a journal between 1990 and 2008 (the most recent year with complete data) is shown in Fig. 14.1. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.