Corrected Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among US Children and Adolescents

To the Editor In the January 2, 2018, issue of JAMA, we published a Research Letter: “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among US Children and Adolescents, 2014-2016.”¹ Using data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we found that the weighted prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was 2.41% (95% CI, 2.17%-2.65%) in 2014-2016. Sample weights are provided with the NHIS data for researchers to use during analysis to take into account unequal probabilities of selection and nonresponse. For the analysis of the 2016 data, we used the weights originally released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in June 2017. The CDC identified inaccuracies in the original sampling weights and updated them in November 2017, after acceptance of the Research Letter, but we did not become aware of this change until December 27, 2017. We reran all the analyses for our estimates using the updated weights. The conclusions were not changed, but there were some small changes in the results for the 2016 data and the pooled data from 2014-2016. For example, the overall prevalence of ASD changed from 2.41% to 2.47% (95% CI, 2.20%-2.73%), with the estimate being within the original 95% CI. The text and table of the Research Letter have been corrected online and a correction notice accompanies this letter.²

Section Editor: Jody W. Zylke, MD, Deputy Editor.