Heterogeneity in the Resilience Intervention Receptiveness in Chinese Parents of Autistic Children

Chinese parents of autistic children experience elevated stress. However, the number of resilience interventions is limited. In this study, we aimed to examine the efficacy of an 8-week resilience-focused group intervention. In this quasi-experimental study, 92 Chinese parents of autistic children assigned to the intervention condition and 51 wait-list control. We evaluated the effectiveness of resilience-focused intervention using ANOVAs. Then, a cluster analysis was performed to identify subgroups of Chinese parents to examine whether the effectiveness of the intervention differed among those clusters and the factors accounting for these variations. There was no overall significant improvement in the parents’ resilience after intervention but there were individual variations in their intervention outcomes. Four clusters were identified. Cluster 1 featured parents in with moderate levels of family quality of life, parental stress, and child behavioral problems. Clusters 2 and 4 had similarly high levels of satisfaction with their family quality of life, and relatively low parental stress. Cluster 3 represented the most troubled parents and had the lowest level of family quality of life, the highest parental stress, and the most child behavioral problems. Cluster 1 but not others benefited from our resilience intervention. It is recommended that interventions be allocated to the most receptive target groups or tailor made for different parent profiles to maximize the effectiveness.