Australian Longitudinal Study of Autistic Adults (ALSAA) (25 years+)

The majority of autism research has focused on children. The aim of this longitudinal study, which started in 2015, was to describe the health and wellbeing of Australian autistic adults.

The ALSAA gathered data from autistic and non-autistic adults aged 25+ years old across two time points. It also collected information from family members and carers. The study has yielded many important insights into the experiences of autism in adulthood, including health and health services, employment, diagnosis, quality of life, loneliness, leisure participation, disclosure, the wellbeing of carers, activities of daily living, intellectual disability and physical activity.

Collaborations between Autism CRC's longitudinal research teams have led to closely aligned study design and common data points, enabling rich datasets to emerge. The combination of the datasets allowed reporting of results on participants with a broad age range, from 15-80 years to gain a broader, lifelong understanding in key areas. These longitudinal studies yielded many important insights into the experiences of Australia’s autistic community and contributed to the critical evaluation and refinement of a range of established measures for use with autistic people. More than 120 peer-reviewed publications have been published using data from our longitudinal studies. All of these resources are listed on Knowledge Centre and on corresponding project pages. 

We would like to thank the many participants who gave significant time in completing the surveys for this study. Longitudinal data from this study will be made available for approved future research purposes through the Australian Autism Biobank in late 2023.