A Descriptive Study to Assess the Knowledge Regarding Autism Spectrum Disorder among the Teachers of Selected Primary Schools at Mangaluru With a view to Develop an Information Booklet

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a range of complex neurodevelopment disorders, characterized by social impairments, communication difficulties, and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviour. The study was aimed to assess the knowledge regarding Autism Spectrum Disorder among the teachers of selected primary schools at Mangaluru. Materials and methods: A descriptive research design with an evaluative approach was adopted for the study. 50 teachers of selected primary schools who met the inclusion criteria were selected through convenience sampling technique. The investigators developed an information booklet and structured knowledge questionnaire on ASD was used to collect the data. Results: Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse the data. Analysis revealed that the majority of the samples (60%) had good knowledge, 24% had excellent knowledge and 16% had average knowledge. Chisquare test is used to find the association of knowledge scores with selected demographic variable. All the variables showed no significant association of the knowledge scores with selected demographic variable at 0.05 level of significance. Conclusion: The overall findings of the study revealed that majority of the teachers of selected primary schools had good knowledge regarding Autism Spectrum Disorder. Hence an information booklet on ASD were provided to the samples those had average knowledge on ASD.