Effectiveness of the Early Intervention Guideline in Improving Social Skills for Autism Spectrum Disorder in Amman, Jordan

The purpose of this research: This study aims to develop an Early Intervention Guideline for parents to improve the social skills of their children with ASD in Jordan. The issue covered in this study is very crucial as it focuses on a sample of people who may lack the care from others because they need special care. Methodology: An experimental quantitative research design was chosen. Using a random sampling method, 60 families of children with ASD were chosen for this study. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics via SPSS. Main Findings: The results revealed a moderate level of agreement among the parents relating to the needs of the family for guidance for early intervention (M=2.39, SD= 0.94) to improve the children’ communication skill (M=1.75, SD=0.76) and the social skills (M=1.57, SD=0.61). The result of the effectiveness before the Early Intervention Guideline intervention was lower (M=1.89, SD=0.63), than after the training (M=2.39, SD=0.94). The communication skills showed an increase after the training (M=1.75, SD= 0.76). The child’s social skills showed an improvement after training (M=0.93, SD=0.47) compared to the development of the child’s skills before training (M=0.93, SD=0.55). Applications: These results indicated the necessity of conducting early intervention programs for families of children with ASD to improve their social and communication skills. Novelty/Originality: This study is new as it designs a comprehensive guideline for Arabic parents of children with ASD in Arabic to improve the social skills of the children. This study is very useful for other centers that take care of other disabled children, such as children with deaf and hearing impairment. This study is applied in Arabic; hence, any Arabic disabled center can use these results to achieve a high degree of communication with disabled children. Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), early intervention, guideline, parents, social skills, Jordan.