Background: Transitioning on from secondary school to further education, work, and new postschool relationships can be a challenging time for autistic young adults. The often poorer postschool outcomes of autistic young adults suggest there are some limitations on the effectiveness of present transition preparations. This warrants further investigation. Therefore, this review aimed to identify and synthesize the (a) study characteristics, (b) focus, (c) outcomes, and (d) methodological reporting of research on autistic students transitioning on from secondary school.Methods: The authors followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses standards to conduct a systematic quantitative review. They registered a protocol with PROSPERO (ID: CRD42022358884) and conducted searches between August 2022 and April 2023 using six databases (ERIC, Scopus, PsycINFO, PubMed, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, and ProQuest Central). The authors used quantitative analysis to identify research trends and gaps and used the Quality Assessment with Diverse Studies (QuADS) tool to assess methodological reporting.Results: The review identified 119 studies, which focused on academic, vocational, or social transitions, or a combination of these. Included research regularly used qualitative methods to report on autistic young adults without co-occurring intellectual disability completing academic transitions in metropolitan/urban parts of the United States. It shows that planning for and supporting the transition is crucial, as is successful home-school collaboration. However, homogeneity within participant groups, and the limited involvement of autistic/autism community members in research design and conduct, often limits generalizability.Conclusion: This review highlights the need for cautious application of findings to policy and practice, particularly given the limited heterogeneity of participant groups. Future research should explore how to empower young adults from diverse autistic subgroups to be leaders of their transition. It should explore the roles of parents and schools in achieving effective home-school collaboration during this transition. This will help supporters to more precisely meet the needs of autistic students entering postschool life. Community Brief Why is this topic important? Autistic young adults may experience some difficulties with the move out of secondary school, a process some people call "transition." To try and make this transition as successful as possible, we need to know what can be done to better prepare autistic young people for the change. What is the purpose of this article? This article aimed to find and report on all the research that looks at transitioning on from secondary school for autistic young adults. Once the research is found, we can report on who was included and what parts of the transition they reported on. By doing this, it allows us to create a summary of what is known about this topic. What did the authors do? We searched for all the research that looked at transitions out of secondary school for autistic people. Then we identified the focus of the research and transitions explored, how the research was conducted, and the strengths and limitations of the studies. Finally, we summarized what the research found. What did the authors find about this topic? We found that the research tells us a lot about autistic young adults who are transitioning from school to further education in the cities and urban parts of the United States. We also found that there is not enough research including autistic young adults with co-occurring intellectual disability. We do know that we need to support autistic students to plan for their transition and that home and school need to work well together to make transition support effective. Finally, we found that there is not enough involvement of autistic people and their supporters in helping to design and conduct research in this area. What do the authors recommend? We need to make sure that we support autistic young adults through this transition to postschool life. We can do this by making sure we help them to plan this transition and by providing the right support. However, we need to be careful because a lot of the research that we presently have does not look at how things such as living in different areas or having a co-occurring intellectual disability might alter the types of supports we provide. This is something for future researchers to explore. We also need to learn more about how schools and families can work together to provide transition supports that suit autistic students' individual needs. Finally, we need to make sure that we include members of the autistic/autism communities when we plan and conduct research in future. How will this analysis help autistic adults now and in the future? The findings of this review have helped us to realize that we need to be careful when we think about existing research, as it might not be representative of the experience of all autistic students. However, it has helped us to identify the things that we know, and some of the things that we need to find out, to help improve the transition to postschool life for autistic students.
