Evaluation of the Quality of Management Guidelines for Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Objective: To systematically assess the quality of management guidelines for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, analyze key management recommendation differences and causes among guidelines, and provide better guideline assessments for clinical workers. Methods: Clinical guidelines for managing children and adolescents with autism were systematically retrieved from a database. Four reviewers independently evaluated the guidelines using the assessment guideline tool, Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE II), and the intra-group correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to measure the consistency of the assessment guidelines among the four reviewers and the differences and reasons for the recommendations and supporting evidence were compared and analyzed. Results: A total of ten management guidelines for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder published from 2014 to 2022 were included in this study, with high overall agreement between raters (range of intra-group correlation coefficients: 53.3% ∼ 85.0%), and areas with better median scores and ranges in Protocol II were as follows: domain 1 (scope and purpose, median = 86.1%, 59.7%–98.6%), Domain 4 (clarity of statements, median = 88.2%, 38.9%–100.0%) and domain 6 (independence of editors, median = 71.9%, 0.0%–100.0%). Among the ten guidelines the guidelines published by the Scott Intercollegiate Guidelines Network in 2016 and by the National Institute for health and care excellence in 2021 scored high and were recommended for adoption, 88.7%, 84.9%, respectively. Conclusion: There is considerable variation between the quality of guidelines for the management of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.