Reviews of Social Stories research
Meta-analyses
Wang and Spillane (2009) examined social skills intervention
studies for children with autism (N = 38); six of which
were studies that used Social Stories as the independent
variable. The authors concluded that, due to low percentage
of non-overlapping data points (PND) scores (M = 67.21%),
‘the effectiveness of Social Stories as an intervention for
improving social skills is questionable’ (p. 337). Similarly
within their meta-analysis, Kokina and Kern (2010)
reported a total PND score across studies that indicated
questionable effectiveness of the intervention (M = 60%;
for 18 studies published between 2002 and 2009). More
recently, meta-analysis results from both Test, Richter and
Knight et al. (2011) and Reynhout and Carter (2011) (18
and 62 studies, respectively) produced overall PND scores
suggesting that the body of Social Stories research has
produced effects that are at best questionable and, at worst,
ineffective. Although the number of studies and publication
year range changes throughout these examples, the end