Functional difficulties in children and youth with autism spectrum disorder: analysis of the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth.

Introduction: This study examined the prevalence of functional difficulties and associated factors in Canadian children/youth aged 5 to 17 years diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Methods: We analyzed data from the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth (CHSCY), a nationally representative survey of Canadian children/youth that used the Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WG-SS) to evaluate functioning in six daily tasks. For each functional domain, binary outcomes were derived (no/some difficulty, a lot of difficulty/no ability).