Understanding perception of stress in autistic and neurotypical children: an in-depth exploration with a view to improving health and well-being acros

The proposed research explores stress-perceptions between autistic and neurotypical children, and their parent/guardians.

This is important because negatively perceived stress contributes to the rise in childhood mental ill-health with autistic children increasingly susceptible.

Limited literature explores children's stress-perceptions with no research considering autistic children's perceptions as focuses on proxy parental reports.

Therefore, this research will explore these individuals stress-perceptions through three studies: (1) synthesise existing literature mapping out child-parent/guardian stress-perceptions, and identify measures including stress-perception questionnaires; (2) administer these questionnaires to measure modern-day stress including stress-perceptions in autistic/neurotypical children and their parent/guardians, whilst screening for autistic traits to invite individuals to; (3) participate in interviews for further exploration including how child-parent stress-perceptions align and how current stress-resilient interventions are accepted.

This research combines health disciplines including health psychology to increase knowledge of stress-perception in autistic children to inform stress-resilient healthcare to protect children from harm and improve life-long health.