Supporting data for 'Development and evaluation of an online intervention to promote effective and safe social media use among high functioning autistic young adults in Hong Kong'

My PhD research aimed to develop and evaluate an online intervention to promote effective and safe social media use among high functioning autistic young adults in Hong Kong. The datasets included the data of two research, namely a qualitative study and a subsequent randomized controlled trial.

Data in the qualitative study were collected through individual interviews with 13 local high functioning autistic young adults. The questions covered their social media use experiences, perceived benefits and risks associated with social media use, and what they wanted to learn to promote safe and effective use. The findings provided useful implications in designing a tailor made and culturally sensitive intervention. Another RCT study was further carried out in order to evaluate how effective this intervention could promote safe and effective social media use among autistic people. A total of 34 local autistic young adults had been recruited, with 16 of them in the intervention group and 18 as the control. Data were collected at three time points, i.e. baseline, after the completion of intervention, as well as one month after the completion. Results showed that our intervention was able to promote significantly higher level of self-efficacy in safe and effective social media use among this group.