The purpose of the study Examining the Quality of IEPs for Young Children with Autism conducted by Ruble, A., McGrew, J., Dalrymple, N., & Jung, L. (2011) was completed in order to evaluate the efficiency of the Individual Education Program (IEP) as a tool to evaluate the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the National Research Council (NRC) requirements/recommendations for children who have been diagnosed with autism. The research was completed by using a pilot sample of young children who have IEP's. Taking the IEP's and review the relations between the associations between the teacher, child, the school and if the IEP is a quality tool.
Participants in the study had to meet the definition and qualifications of autism and were actively receiving services that meet the IDEA category. The research team evaluated the individual and randomly selected the participants after receiving consent from the parents and the teachers. The study first had seventy-nine participants to choose from and after the screening process, there were only thirty-five teacher left, this was because fifteen refused to participate, four did not qualify and twenty-one refused for other reasons. Thirty-three of the teachers were female and stated that they had autism training, twelve of them said they had acquired skills to assess students with autism, and another 9 stated that they have also been either a trainer or consultant for other teachers. The thirty-five children ranged in ages from three to nine years old, twenty nine of them were male, more than three-quarters were Caucasian and they came from sixteen schools in either a Southern or Midwestern state. Three percent of the schools were in a large city, and the remaining were in small or rural areas with ten of the children's families only earning $24,999 or less, twelve families reporting income between $25, 000-$49,999 and the remaining having an income of over $50,000.