Keeping up with the Times: Measuring the Stress of Parents of Children with ASD over Email

Background:  

Although increased support has been found to reduce the stress experienced by families of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (e.g., Weiss et al., 2013) Hall and Graff (2011) found that average parent ratings of support from professional organizations fell between a rating of 1 (not at all helpful) and 2 (somewhat helpful). Autism Ontario (AO) is a charitable organization that provides the leading source of information and referral on ASD in Ontario, Canada. Between 2007 and 2009, 63% of contact initiated by families to family support coordinators (FSCs) of AO occurred through email. It is more difficult to express emotions over email because of the absence of verbal and body language cues present during phone and in-person contact (Byron, 2008; Ekman et al, 2004) and, as a result, there is a greater risk for FSCs to misinterpret family stress over email, when compared to phone and in-person communication. Yet the ability of an organization to determine the stress of families that contact them is an important first step to responding appropriately, in a manner that best serves the family’s needs. 

Objectives:  

This project presents the results of a program to measure the stress of families before and after email contact with AO FSCs. 

Methods:  

Four equally-spaced time points were selected for data collection throughout the past year. Each of the time points served as a trigger for FSCs to forward the email addresses of families who had contacted them in the preceding week to the AO research team.  The researchers then sent these families an online survey that inquired about their overall experiences with email communication with AO that past week, including reporting on how much stress they were experiencing prior to contacting FSCs and how much stress they felt afterwards.

Results:  

49 families responded in the round of the email stress survey being reported.  The survey responses indicated that families contacted the AO FSCs for various reasons (see Figure 1). A large number of the respondents considered themselves “very stressed” (35%) (see Table 1) prior to contacting FSCs. 53% of respondents reported a reduction in stress following their correspondence with FSCs while another 41% reported no change. For respondents that indicated a reduction in stress, the mean reduction was 1.77 points on a 5-point rating scale. The majority of the families indicated they were satisfied with their email communication with the FSCs (80%). Reasons families contacted FSCs were not significantly related to their reported stress or their satisfaction with their email communication. 

Conclusions:  

Online communication is convenient for families as it can be initiated at any time without scheduling limitations, and it has become the most common form of contacting FSCs at AO. Additionally, it allows for anonymity that reduces social stigma associated with seeking help (DuBois, 2004). The findings suggest that, despite the increased possibility of emotional detachment in email correspondence, it is still possible for organizations to measure and help alleviate the stress of families of children with ASD through email communication.