Notions of Support Challenged by Participatory research with adults with Asperger's Syndrome

This article will discuss the implications for traditional notions of support of the findings of some participatory research involving adults with Asperger’s syndrome as co-researchers. The research was undertaken as part of the requirements for a PhD (Robinson, 2015) and this article retells the story of the research as contained in my thesis. The research is significant in three ways. Firstly, it is an account of participatory research which involved adults with Asperger’s syndrome throughout every stage of the research. Secondly, the findings are significant as they point to a new way of thinking about Asperger’s syndrome and suggest a new way of thinking about disability generally. Thirdly, although the research was intended to ascertain what support adults with Asperger’s syndrome wanted, the findings challenge traditional notions of support.