A Systematic Review of Implicit Versus Explicit Social Skills Group Programs in Different Settings for School-Aged Autistic Children and Adolescents.
Social skills groups, on average, do not improve social outcomes for autistic students.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Afsharnejad et al. (2024) looked at every group-based social skills program for school-aged autistic kids. They pulled together decades of single studies and ran one big math check. The goal: see if these groups really help students make friends, share, or start chats.
What they found
After fixing for publication bias, the answer was flat. Social skills groups showed no real gain on any social outcome. Only tiny blips appeared when parents or teachers filled out rating scales.
How this fits with other research
Sounds odd, because many single studies cheered. Lancioni et al. (2011) ran a tight RCT and saw kids master more social concepts. Tse et al. (2007) and Poppes et al. (2010) also found medium parent-reported gains after 12-week groups. The new review includes all of them, so it is not saying those data are fake. It shows that when you average many studies together, the flashy results shrink to zero.
Two adult studies extend the same model and still look good. Saré et al. (2020) got 45% of adults with ASD into jobs after a 15-week group. Ferguson et al. (2021) taught minimally verbal adults with ID to stay on topic. The review did not cover adults, so their positive signal stands untouched.
Bottom line: small, hopeful trials often over-sell benefit. Once you line them up and correct for bias, the effect disappears for students.
Why it matters
If you run lunch-bunch social groups hoping for big friend-making gains, pause. The evidence says overall progress is near zero for school-aged kids. Keep groups only if you pair them with exact measurement and individual targets. Track each learner with cold-probe data, not parent scales. Better yet, fold social goals into daily routines and peer-mediated tactics where effects stay visible.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to identify and evaluate the quality of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), assessing the efficacy of Social Skills Group Programs (SSGPs) for primary and secondary school aged autistic children and adolescents exploring the influence of informant, setting characteristics and teaching strategies as moderating factors for social outcomes. A search of the electronic databases of Medline, ProQuest, CINAHL, Scopus, and Web of Sciences electronic databases was conducted for the period January 1, 2013 until December 31, 2023 for peer-reviewed RCT studies published in English, evaluating the efficacy of SSGPs for school-aged autistic children and adolescents (6-18 years). Included studies were assessed for methodological quality and efficacy using random effect meta-analysis. Informant analysis and moderator analyses were also conducted investigating the influence of informant, setting characteristics and teaching strategy utilised in the SSGPs on the participants social outcomes. Sixty-five studies were included in the systematic review with 49 studies included in the meta-analysis. Although most studies had strong or good methodological quality, a high possibility of publication bias was detected in the meta-analysis. After statistical adjustments for publication bias were made, findings revealed that SSGPs had no effect on the overall outcomes assessed by included studies on school-aged autistic children and adolescents. However, informant analysis revealed small effects reported by self-report, parent-proxy and researchers. Teaching strategies and setting characteristics were not significant moderators for the efficacy of SSGPs on the social outcomes of autistic children and adolescents. This review highlights the need for improvements in measurement frameworks for assessing social skills in autistic children and adolescents.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2024 · doi:10.1080/20473869.2021.1902730