Use and Effectiveness of the Smiling Mind Smartphone Application on Wellbeing of Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Their Caregivers

Once pre-intervention surveys have been completed, participants (include children (11-17) and adults (18+) with ASD, caregivers of children with ASD. Children are required to participate with a caregiver) will be randomly allocated to the waitlisted control or intervention groups using a computer generated randomization procedure (i.e. randomizer.org). Following group allocation, intervention participants will be emailed a prompt to download the Smiling Mind app. The download will activate the Smiling Mind app’s daily reminder and activity alarms. Intervention participants will then select mindfulness meditations provided by the Smiling Mind app, based on their age group. Each participant will be asked to spend 10mins (Children with caregivers) or 20mins (Adults with ASD, individual caregivers) each day for 5 days taking part in the meditation exercises. Intervention fidelity is measured through in app monitoring of meditations. Post intervention survey's are issued immediately post-intervention and 1 month post-intervention. Once the intervention is completed a qualitative survey involving a subsample of participants (up to 30 participants required to achieve data saturation across all groups - including adults with ASD and caregivers, with their children if possible), who have consented to be interviewed. Participants will be contacted through their nominated email address for an interview, as provided through the survey. Participant interviews will be semi-structured. The focus will be on questions relating to the smartphone app and, in particular, whether participants found the mindfulness intervention beneficial and what aspects were beneficial. Interviews will be conducted via telephone or video conferencing software where required.