Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors of School Non-attendance in Autistic Adolescents.
Child anxiety is the strongest long-term predictor of school absence in autistic middle-schoolers — target anxiety early to protect attendance.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adams et al. (2025) tracked 11- to young learners autistic students for two school years. They measured anxiety, IQ, behavior, and how often each teen missed school.
The team used parent, teacher, and child reports plus school records. They ran the numbers to see which factors best predicted later absences.
What they found
Child anxiety was the only factor that kept predicting more missed days at every time point. Other traits like IQ or behavior problems faded out.
A one-step rise on the anxiety scale raised absence risk months later. The link held even after the researchers controlled for gender, IQ, and earlier attendance.
How this fits with other research
The result builds on Adams et al. (2020) surveys that showed a large share of autistic kids self-report anxiety yet feel adults miss it at school. The new study shows why catching it matters: unseen anxiety today drives absence tomorrow.
Adams et al. (2020) also linked anxiety to lower school quality-of-life. The 2025 paper moves the story from “school feels worse” to “school is actually skipped.”
Aponte et al. (2025) found anxiety tied to repetitive behaviors in autistic adults, not attendance. The difference makes sense: adults face different demands than middle-schoolers who must show up each day.
Why it matters
If anxiety is the top long-term predictor of absence, BCBAs can act early. Add brief anxiety screens to your intake. Teach coping, break, and escape plans before refusal becomes a habit. Targeting anxiety protects both attendance and learning time.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Recent research has shown that autistic children are reported to have lower school attendance than non-autistic students. School non-attendance can occur for multiple reasons, including attendance at medical/health appointments and school refusal/emotionally based school avoidance. Providing support to improve autistic children's school attendance requires an understanding of the factors that potentially lead to or influence specific types of school non-attendance. The aim of this study was to identify concurrent and longitudinal school, family, and child factors associated with school non-attendance in autistic children. Parents/caregivers who had previously participated in a 6 year longitudinal study in Australia were invited to complete a follow-up online survey about their child's school attendance. Seventy-seven parents of autistic children aged 11-14 years participated. Over 40% of children had persistent absence (> 10% days) from school. Based on multivariate negative binomial regression models, child anxiety was a significant predictor of days missed for multiple types of school non-attendance. Other factors, including child sensory processing differences, child behavioural and emotional challenges, parent stress, family income, and parent employment, were correlated with specific absence types. Child anxiety was the strongest and most consistent longitudinal predictor, with higher child anxiety significantly predicting more days of school non-attendance 3, 4, and 6 years later. Findings highlight the importance of considering school, child, and family factors specific to different types of school non-attendance to support autistic children. Identifying factors that lead to child anxiety and preventing/reducing child anxiety early is a potentially promising avenue to support attendance.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.1111/j.1746-1561.2010.00516.x