COMPASS Across Settings (CAST) for Improving Transition Outcomes for Students With ASD

Goal Attainment of IEP progress (Ruble et al., 2012; 2018).

Goal attainment is assessed using psychometric equivalence goal attainment scaling (PET-GAS). Each goal attainment scale used a five-point rating scale: - 2 = student's present levels of performance, - 1 = progress, 0 = expected level of outcome by the end of the school year, +1 = somewhat more than expected, +2 = much more than expected. Half-scores were allowed when raters observed skill levels between two benchmarks. A score of zero represented improvement consistent with the actual description of the written IEP objective. PET-GAS pre- and post-treatment ratings are based on video demonstrations, work samples, and/or data collected by the teacher, caregiver, and/or job coach. In a prior study, two coders independently coded 65% of the goals at baseline and three coders independently rated 35% at final evaluation. Interrater agreement was .94 at baseline and .86 at final evaluation.

Attainment of Postsecondary Goals (Ruble et al., 2019)

Postsecondary outcomes will be assessed by parent report of attainment in goals (such as enrolling in a training or college program and living independently; Ruble et al., 2019). IEP goal progress is based on a Likert-type scale questionnaire. Parents are asked to think of where the student was at the beginning of the school year with the specific skill (goal) and rate how much progress has been made to date using a five-point scale (1 'none at all' to 5 'a great deal') for each of the three monitored IEP goals. Because CAST prioritizes the development of goals that represent the pivotal areas of instruction for students with autism-social, communication, and learning/work behavior skills, similar goal domains are selected for the control group students for end of the year progress. In a prior study (Ruble et al., 2019), informants' judgments of goal progress were internally consistent across the three goals (alpha) for the parent measure (α = .81) and the teacher measure (α = .69).

Fidelity Assessment of Initial CAST consultation (Ruble et al., 2018)

Consultant adherence to the initial consultation protocol of CAST is anticipated to be assessed using a 35-item close-ended (yes/no) checklist completed by parents (KR20 = .95), teachers (KR20 = .85), and an independent rater (researcher) (KR20 = .74) (Ruble et al.,2018).

Fidelity Assessment of CAST Coaching (Ruble et al., 2018)

The second fidelity measure assesses consultant adherence to the coaching protocol. We anticipate using a 17-item checklist (yes/no) completed by teachers and independent raters (KR20 = 1.0) unaware of intervention goals.

Organizational Connectedness

Social network analysis will be used to assess organizational connectedness of team members. Each participant will be asked to identify stakeholders with whom they meet, communicate, actively plan, share information, and collaborate. The purpose is to gather data on directed relational ties between home, school, and community actors involved in the transition process. The relational data will be used to construct and analyze patterns of interaction and service delivery in collaborative networks. For instance, if a school administrator (i) reports trust with a parent (j), but the parent does not report trust with the school administrator, that would indicate the absence of mutual trust. This will also be apparent in the structure of the collaborative network, such as when a directed tie exists from i to j but not from j to i.

Transition Plan Quality (Ruble et al., 2019)

Transition Planning Quality (TPQ) will be assessed by parent, teacher, student, and Pre-ETS report. The TPQ is a 30-item four-point Likert parent report scale (1 'strongly disagree' to 4 'strongly agree') that is sensitive to IEP quality and postsecondary outcomes.(Ruble, McGrew, Wong, et al., 2019) The TPQ captures the quality of the transition planning process based on best-practices for transitioning youth, Indicator 13, and focus group results collected from more than 40 stakeholders.(Snell-Rood et al., 2020) Example items are "Students post-high school goals are based on his/her interests and strengths; Student is involved in the decision-making process for his/her education." The internal consistency is .98.(Ruble et al., 2019)