29696
Evaluating the Role of Social Anxiety and Autistic Traits on Social Network and Support in One to One Matched First-Year University Students with and without Autism
Students transitioning to first-year of university face increasing academic (ACA), daily-living skills (DLS), and social (SOC) demands, and experience changes in their social network structure (SNS) and perceived social support (PSS). For students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), autism-related social impairments might affect one’s ability to cope with new challenges at university, and to establish a new SNS to access support. Many students also experience social anxiety, further impacting social engagement. Understanding how autistic traits and social anxiety affect first-year students’ university experience can help identify targets for interventions supporting university transition.
Objectives:
Investigate differences at the time of university transition between ASD and typically developing (TD) students in:
1) Perceived distress frequency in ACA, DLS, and SOC;
2) SNS and PSS; AND
3) Assess the influence of social anxiety and autistic traits on significant differences identified under objectives 1) and 2).
Methods:
28 ASD and 28 TD first-year university students (M: 18.32/18.39 years) 1:1 matched by age, sex, ethnicity, pre-university academic performance, and university degree completed online questionnaires assessing autism traits (Autism Quotient-28), social anxiety (Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents), and Social Network and Perceived Social Support (SNaPSS). SNaPSS measures: a) students’ perceived distress frequency across ACA, DLS, and SOC areas at university; b) SNS: each student names up to 20 people that they are close to and are in contact with; c) PSS: perceived support provided by each network member. We conducted independent samples t-tests (bootstrapped, 2000 resamples) and step-wise hierarchical linear regressions.
Results:
ASD students had significantly higher levels of autistic traits and social anxiety, and perceived greater distress frequency in ACA and DLS than TD students. For SNS and PSS, ASD students reported a smaller social network size than TD students, but perceived similar quantity and quality of support (Fig 1). Using step-wise hierarchical linear regression (Table 1a), higher social anxiety (step 1) was associated with greater distress frequency in ACA, DLS, SOC, and a smaller SNS size across all students. Adding autistic traits and diagnostic group in step 2, social anxiety was no longer significantly associated with SNS size, and diagnostic group was a significant predictor for perceived ACA distress frequency. Conducting step-wise linear regressions to investigate group differences, when autistic traits was included in the model, higher social anxiety was associated with greater perceived distress ACA frequency in ASD students only, but not in TD students (Table 1b).
Conclusions:
Using a 1:1 matched sample, higher social anxiety, not autistic traits, showed a more pervasive association to first-year ASD and TD students’ perceived distress across ACA, DLS, and SOC areas, and SNS size. In particular, higher social anxiety exerted a greater negative impact on ASD students’ academics than TD students. Social anxiety and autistic traits both affect social competency, and may have accounted for shared variance in SNS size. Reducing social anxiety might help alleviate perceived distress in social and non-social aspects of university life for both TD and ASD students, and particularly in ACA for ASD students, fostering a more positive university transition.