Intersectional Effects of Race and Gender on Age of Special Education Service Receipt

Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is important for providing early intervention for children, which significantly improves future outcomes. Race and gender have shown to correlate with differential age of diagnosis for children with ASD; the male-to-female ratio of autistic individuals in the US is 4:1, and there have been studies indicating that females often have a later Age of Diagnosis (AOD) than their male counterparts. However, there have been conflicting results in previous studies regarding the effect of race on AOD, as well as a lack of studies focused on any interactive effects between race and gender. This study will determine whether race and gender have intersectional effects on the AOD of autistic children, operationally defined as the grade level at which a child with autism first receives autism as their primary exceptionality classification in the public school system for special education service receipt. Data will be drawn from the Miami School Readiness Project, a large-scale and ethnically diverse longitudinal study of children that attended Miami-Dade County Public Schools. A subsample of students that had received autism as a primary exceptionality classification will be taken and a multiple regression analysis will be performed to determine the relationship of race and gender with the grade level at which students first receive their autism exceptionality. The analysis will control for poverty status, Dual Language Learner status, and behavior/cognitive functioning levels. This analysis will address 1) Is the age of special education receipt for ASD in schools similar between males and females? 2) Is the age of special education receipt similar between White, Black, Asian, and Latino children? 3) Are there any intersectional effects between race and gender on the age of special education service receipt? 4) Are certain intersectional groups likely to receive a different primary exceptionality before their ASD exceptionality?

Hello, my name is Maharun Mia and I’ve been working with Dr. Adam Winsler from the George Mason Psychology department on a project about the intersectional effects of race and gender and age of special education services received for autistic kids.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference identified by difficulties in socialization and characterized by repetitive, frequent behaviors and activities. It exists on sort of a spectrum so it varies between individuals of their symptom severity and what kind of behavior they’re exhibiting. The age of diagnosis for autism decreased as we learned more about it. So from 2006 to 2018, in the US, the age of diagnosis decreased from 61 months to 53 months. This is important because having an early-age of diagnosis means that these kids can attain early interventions and therapies that better outcomes in terms of socialization and behavioral functioning that betters their quality of life.
There’s a higher identification rate of autism in males rather than females, this ratio of male-to-female autistic populations is about 4:1. We have found that there’s an older age of diagnosis for females compared to males.
For race and age of diagnosis, the connection is less clear; there are some contradicting conclusions. However, we do know that there’s over and under-representation of different race categories within autistic populations. Autism tends to be more prevalent among white kids rather than black or Hispanic kids and this could also indicate differential age of diagnosis. As this could mean that black or Hispanic kids are getting diagnosed later than white kids or just going undiagnosed.
Intersectionality is the framework that I’m approaching the study from. Intersectionality is this theoretical framework that looks at how a person’s socio-political identities overlap to create a unique system of privilege and oppression. It’s important in the terms of autism diagnosis and service attainment, as this means that intersectionality could be creating these steeper barriers to attain these treatments and a better quality of life for specific intersectional groups such as black females, Latina females, etc.
For my current study, I will be using Special Education Service Receipt as my operational definition for the age of diagnosis in this study. While this is a little bit different from age of diagnosis, this is when these kids are actually receiving their services in schools for autism. My main purpose is to identify any race or gender effects on the timing of primary exceptionality attainment. Primary exceptionality is when they receive that category that allows them to receive the services.
I will be using data from the Miami School Readiness project. This was a large-scale, longitudinal, and ethnically diverse study that contains five cohorts of students and it is majority black and Latino. Only students who have ever had a primary exceptionality for autism from grades K-12 will be included.
My independent variables are race and gender. My dependent variables are the timing of primary exceptionality attainment and I will be controlling for poverty status, dual language learner(DLL) status, and behavioral cognitive functioning scores at age 4, as these have shown in the literature to have an impact on the age of diagnosis.
For my data analysis, I’ll be performing a hierarchical multiple regression model. So for the first level, it will just be the intersection of race and gender, then the second level will then include poverty and DLL status, and lastly will include the cognitive behavioral functioning scores as covariates. I’m hoping to continue this research next semester and finish my data analysis and then continue on to write my thesis and have it published, at some point, in a journal and present my results at conferences.