A Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation RCT of Virtual Interview Training for Autistic Transition-Age Youth - Project Summary:
Pre-employment transition services is federally-mandated by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act
(2014) to help prepare autistic transition-age youth for the workforce prior to existing high school. However,
there are few evidence-based practices implemented within pre-employment transition services, which
contribute to low employment rates among autistic transition-age youth. A limitation of pre-employment
transition services is the job interview component, which utilizes teacher-led role-play training that lacks
empirical validation, is resource-intensive, and does not adhere to best practices to train sustainable changes
in behavior (e.g., repeated practice, scaffolding, token economy). Moreover, the autism community as voice
the need for better job interview preparation. To fill this training need, our team (via R34 MH111531) partnered
with the autism community to adapt Virtual Reality Job interview Training (VR-JIT, an internet-delivered job
interview simulator with four levels of automated feedback with elearning job interview content) to meet the
needs of autistic transition-age youth (now called Virtual Interview Training for Transition Age Youth (VIT)). Our
subsequent randomized controlled trial demonstrated several aspects of VIT feasibility, including delivery by
local teachers at five schools, training teachers as VIT implementers, and completing the pilot RCT (i.e.,
recruitment, enrollment, study completers). The results of this pilot study demonstrated that VIT was initially
effective at improving job interview skills, job interview anxiety, and competitive employment within 6 months of
completing VIT. Thus, the overarching goal of this study is to conduct a fully-powered trial to evaluate the
impact of VIT across approximately 16 schools via a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation RCT. Our
specific aims are to 1) Evaluate whether pre-employment transition services (ETS) with VIT, as compared to
ETS with an active control intervention (i.e., job interview didactics/elearning with a series of 3-5 minutes
videos of employed autistic adults talking about their career pathways), enhances employment outcomes; 2)
Evaluate mechanisms of employment outcomes and psychological distress by nine months post-
randomization; and 3) Conduct a multilevel, mixed-method process evaluation to assess initial implementation
outcomes (i.e., facilitators, barriers, scalability, and affordability of VIT implementation).