A Quality Assessment of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Speech Interventions for Minimally Verbal Individuals with ASD and ID: An Overview.

Systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analyses (MA) have been identified as the gold standard for evidence synthesis. Given their potential to inform practice and policy, it is important that SR and MA adhere to internationally agreed guidelines. We undertook a review of the methodological characteristics and reporting quality of SR and MA of interventions targeting early speech production in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Intellectual Disabilities (ID). The review protocol was registered at PROSPERO (NEED TO INCLUDE PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER). Two instruments designed to evaluate SR and MA, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) and, A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews (AMSTAR-2) were used to appraise the existing literature. We identified 12 SR and/or MA that met the prespecified inclusion criteria. The assessment of the methodological quality (i.e., AMSTAR-2) found that the vast majority (k=10) of the reviews were rated as critically low. We also found relatively low adherence to the reporting guidelines outlined in PRISMA for most of the included studies. We discuss our findings in the broader context of the evidence synthesis for behaviour analytic interventions.