Autism-Statistics, Incidence, Prevalance

The Graphing IDEA is a web based graphing tool, which shows U.S. autism disability data, rates, statistics, incidence and prevalence.

Data References

At this time, all of the graphs, charts, and maps use only the following data sources:

• Child Count data are collected annually by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in accordance with Section 618 of Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA defines 13 eligibility categories including autism that data is recorded for. OSEP releases data from 1998 to the most recent data (2006) on their website, however they have provided us data back to 1992. Each state collects it's own data and submits the state data to the OSEP. OSEP uses the data to prepare reports for the US Congress. Autism was added as a separate eligibility category in 1991 (optional) and 1992 (required). Before 1991 autism was recorded in the Other Health Impairment Category (OHI) per OSEP policy. The child count data is used as the numerator in prevalence calculations. In the case of the maps we request the child count data but from the specific states, because the states provide us with more detailed data (ie school district or county).
  Data Reference: https://www.ideadata.org/PartBChildCount.asp
• Birth Data data was downloaded from the CDC website for years 1968 to 2004. We use this data for the denominator in prevalence calculations.
  Data Reference: http://www.cdc.gov
• Public School Enrollment data was download from National Center For Education Statistics website. We use this data for the denominator in prevalence calculations.
  Data Reference: http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/bat/

Graphing IDEA Professional

The Graphing IDEA Professional has support all of the childhood disabilities recorded under IDEA. The Professional version has all of the features listed below. Access to the Professional version is limited to qualified autism researchers only. We are forced to limit access to the professional version because of the computational demand placed on our servers. If interested, please email FightingAutism requesting access. A copy of your CV and list of publications will be required.

• Calculate, graph, and compare the following graph types of all IDEA recorded disabilities including autism in all 50 states and outlying areas.
  • Total Number of cases,
  • Total Number of cases cumulative Growth,
  • Total Number of casese Annual Growth,
  • Total Number of cases Percent of All Disabilities,
  • Number of cases by Birth Year,
  • Number of cases by Age,
  • Crude Incidence
  • Prevalence by Birth Year (gold standard for comparing disorders),
  • Prevalence by Birth Year and Holding Age Constant (gold standard for identifying changing prevalences)
  • Prevalence by Age
  • Historical Prevalence by by Birth year
  • Historical Prevalence by Age
• Allow technical analysis of the number of cases, crude incidence, prevalence and growth of disabilities in over 6 million children.
• Allow the generation of over 10,000,000 possible graph combinations.
• Allow Identification of significant trends in any disability such as an epidemic or decline in incidence, growth or prevalence.
• Allow the general public to engage in collaborative and meaningful dialog about disabilities and disability comparisons.
• Allow the large scale accumulation of disability data in a colabrative, public and low cost forum.
• Allow downloading of all source data.
• Added 2006 IDEA data.