Participatory Research for Suicide Prevention in Autism
Phase: NA
Conditions: Autism, Suicide Prevention
Sponsor: University of Utah

Participatory Research for Suicide Prevention in Autism 
NCT06552871 
Principal Investigator: Anne Kirby 
Document date: 2024-07-08 
 
 
 

Study Protocol and Statistical Analysis Plan – Aim 3 (Clinical Trial) 
Study Protocol  
Single arm, pre-test post-test pilot study of the Forming Love around Autistic people to Prevent 
Suicide (FLAPS) intervention.  
Recruitment 
We will recruit participants for FLAPS by first reaching out to organizations and inviting an 
organization representative to complete an interest form.  
Once an organization agrees to participate, the organization representative will send out 
individual-level recruitment invitations to others in their organization with a link to consent 
information and a baseline study survey administered through Qualtrics. Via the survey, 
participants will be provided more information about the study and determine if they will 
participate in the program with their organization and consent to enroll in the study. The survey 
will collect participant-level descriptive information, baseline questionnaire data, contact 
information, and accessibility needs.  
Upon completion of the study, participants will receive a gift card of up to $70, prorated based 
on the study components they completed.  
Program Implementation 
We will implement the group-based FLAPS program virtually over Zoom in sets of four 2-hour 
sessions. We sent log-on information and schedule reminders to each participant via email. 
After each session, we will provide all participants with additional program resources. 
Data Collection 
To measure the short-term outcomes of FLAPS (i.e., suicide prevention knowledge, capacity, 
and actions), we adapted the Steps Toward Prevention (STP) questionnaire (from Wexler et al., 
2025; PMC11980237). The AASPIRE SPP team adapted the STP to align with the focus of 
FLAPS, creating the STP-Autism Community Suicide Prevention questionnaire. The STP-
Autism Community Suicide Prevention questionnaire includes items on knowledge, capacity, 
and actions related to suicide prevention in general as well as specific to the autistic community.  
In the post-program survey, participants will be asked to rate their satisfaction with the program. 
We will collect additional information about program relevance and application of program 
information in their organization. Optional post-program qualitative interviews will be conducted 
by a research team member who was not involved with implementation. 
Statistical Analysis Plan 
We will calculate descriptive statistics for participant demographics, descriptive information, and 
scaled feedback items.  
We will also apply descriptive statistics to summarize data collected about engagement and 
participation in the program.  

For the primary outcomes on the STP-Autism Community Suicide Prevention questionnaire, we 
will first examine the individual-level means and standard deviations on the average scores for 
each construct at all three timepoints using t-tests and Cohen’s D effect sizes. Then we will 
conduct multi-level generalized linear models using baseline-observation-carried-forward 
technique and accounting for nesting within organizations.