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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Mar 7.

Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Dis Primers. 2020 Jan 16;6(1):5. doi: 10.1038/s41572-019-0138-4

Table 2 |.

Factors that affect QOL

Type of QOL	Factor	Description
Objective QOL	Early language	Follow-up studies of adults with autism who were diagnosed as children have examined the amount of spoken language during early childhood. Individuals with autism who had fluent speech are more likely to have higher levels of objective QOL in adulthood than those with phrase speech or those with no speech or who spoke in single words
	Indicators of intelligence	Studies examining IQ scores using standardized IQ tests administered in both early childhood and adulthood find that individuals with autism and higher IQ scores have higher levels of objective QOL than those with lower IQ scores. Other, less-standardized measures of intelligence (such as those used in large cohort studies) have similar findings
	Adaptive behaviour	Higher levels of adaptive behaviour — and particularly more activities of daily living — are associated with better objective QOL in people with autism. Adaptive behaviour is a challenge for many individuals with autism, who have scores below what would be expected based on IQ²⁸⁷. Adaptive behaviour is changeable, making it a promising avenue for interventions to improve objective QOL
	Autism symptom severity	Individuals with more severe autism symptoms tend to have lower objective QOL in adulthood
	Challenging behaviours	Higher levels of challenging behaviours in people with autism, which can include both internalizing problems and externalizing problems, are related to lower objective QOL
	Sex or gender	Sex or gender associations with objective QOL have been demonstrated in terms of employment or post-secondary education; indeed, women with autism obtain employment and post-secondary educational positions at the same rate as men with autism but have a more difficult time maintaining those positions over time
Subjective QOL	Perceived stress	Many adults with autism perceive high levels of stress in their own lives; these perceptions are related to lower subjective QOL
Subjective QOL	Supports	Several different types of supports have been related to subjective QOL, including formal services, support from family members (most often parents) and more general social support from others

QOL, quality of life.