Box 2.

Authenticity – how autism communities can shape a research agenda (www.autistica.co.uk/our-research/your-research-priorities).

Autistica and a consortium of partners launched a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership to define the top 10 autism research questions. This was an independently facilitated and validated process, which surveyed a representative sample of autistic people, caregivers and professionals before bringing them together to reach agreement on the top 10 through a final workshop. Importantly, the process deliberately excluded researchers from the final workshop so that the top 10 is a genuinely community-led, authentic list (Cusack and Sterry, 2016).
Strengths of this approach	Limitations of this approach
● Independent facilitation achieved consensus across groups and ensured power balance between groups ● Impact includes increased likelihood of major autism research funding from government and charitable organisations	● Merging perspectives of a diverse group into homogeneous outcomes can result in under-specified priority research topics ● It remains challenging to fully include everyone on the spectrum (e.g. those with additional intellectual disabilities and limited spoken communication)