Formal ways of gathering Autistic opinions and experiences?

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Hi. I'm a rising Senior in college with a disability studies professor who an interest in neurodiversity, and I also have a support service at my school.

I'm interested in expanding dialogue surrounding neurodiversity (its positives and drawbacks) and hopefully advocating for better support for students at college.

In doing that, I would like some statistics that could underline the basic problems ASD students and professionals run into. What causes the most difficulty for Autistic students academically? What about socially?

One of my critiques of the neurodiversity movement is that the only traits it seems to focus on de-stigmatizing are stimming and echolalia, but Autism is much more than that. Should I bring up the difficulties posed by lack of reciprocity, conversational fluency, perceived offensive behavior? (The last one is very pertinent to college.) If so, I might need hard evidence to back me up.

Should I design a poll, or are there already studies focusing on this?

Assumptions about what should be considered as implied versus what is said directly might be an important factor in explaining several other points like the conversation fluency and understanding what is offensive.

There are certainly studies you can look at. Try Google Scholar--you can google that. Also, Autism Research Center publishes their research--the journal containing their study requires payment but the arc offers it for free. What you might find is some countries do studies, others do not. Whether those studies apply to any other country is debatable and always a hard question in research.

Study searches is a bit of an art with finding search terms. You can also search for specific researchers. As you go through searches, you will see patterns you can use to find information. You can also use more regular news on new research--usually when something interesting is published, autism and regular news sites will carry the news and may point to the original study.

For population stats, the CDC puts out some data for the US, although maybe not for your age group.

As far as designing a survey, that is a bit more complex than it seems. One thing is selection bias--are you just surveying people that do surveys, for example. You also need to get a good sample size/response rate (response rate might be your biggest issue). However, you can be creative with studies, for example, survey your school on autism attitudes. Ask the students what they think autism is and how they imagine what difficulties autistic people might have. If the school has a mailing list and will allow you to use it with a survey application, you might get good results with some mailings and advertising.

Another interesting avenue you have is the experience other post in places like YouTube. You can use it raw as examples of the autistic experience for your audience--first-hand accounts can be more powerful than distilled data. You could also use it as a data source by collating their histories. There are sociological studies describing small populations. An example of that research is "Living with autism without knowing: receiving a diagnosis in
later life" (I cannot post links, but simple search for the title and you will find it). You can also download the pdf from there.