The inclusion of fathers in investigations of autistic spectrum disorders

• Review of paternal inclusion in research on autistic spectrum disorders over past decade.
• Fathers are essentially absent from the majority of research on autism.
• Low rates observed regardless of journal type, age of child, or year of publication.

Recent reviews indicate an underrepresentation of fathers in empirical investigations of child development and psychopathology (Cassano et al., 2006 and Phares et al., 2005). The purpose of the current study was to examine the nature of parental involvement in research on children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Articles published over the last decade from journals with the highest impact factors in disciplines relevant to the study of ASD were reviewed, including areas of psychiatry, developmental psychopathology, and developmental disabilities. A total of 404 articles were included in the review and were coded to determine if parental inclusion and method of statistical analysis varied as a function of child age, journal type, year of publication, and parent gender. Results were consistent with findings from recent reviews and indicated that fathers are widely underrepresented in the literature on ASD, even more so than rates of inclusion in investigations of developmental and child clinical psychology. In contrast to findings from broad reviews of parental inclusion in studies of child psychopathology, fathers’ involvement was not higher in older versus younger age of child participant. Clinical implications and recommendations to improve inclusion rates of fathers in research on children with ASDs are discussed.