After working through the questionnaire responses and coding the data, I developed four final themes. At this stage, I wanted to step away from the individual codes and look at what the responses were collectively telling me about autistic adults’ experiences of international travel.
I ended with four themes:
What became interesting was how much these themes overlapped. Difficulties with travel were rarely caused by one isolated thing. Instead, independence, uncertainty, the environment and access to information seemed to affect one another throughout the journey.
One of the most interesting things to emerge was that participants understood independence in different ways. Some described it as being able to travel or complete tasks without needing help from another person. However, other responses suggested that support could actually make independence more achievable.
P01 described independence as:
“Having the support to be able to develop and grow in independence.”
P09 also spoke about wanting travel to be easier without having to ask staff for help, while emphasising:
“i still want to be independent.”
This created an interesting tension within the responses. Support and independence do not necessarily have to be opposites. The type of support, when it appears, and how much control the traveller retains may be more important than simply whether support exists.
Unpredictability appeared repeatedly across the responses, particularly around airports, security, timings, delays and changing information.
P01 explained:
“I need everything to be prepared and organised and when the structure is changed such as change in location of the boarding area, I find it very stressful.”
Timing could create a similar problem. P09 described either misjudging how much time was needed or compensating by arriving extremely early: