Strengths and limitations
autism-specific
There are a number of strengths to this study, including the use of a semi-structured interview guide for a relatively high number of participating GPs. Further, we maintained a high level of interpretive rigour and trustworthiness and quality of the study through an awareness of reflexivity, data auditing and use of quality control measures as well as coding of the analysis by a researcher independent of the data collection.There are also some limitations that need highlighting. One of the limitations is that the GPs who participated in this qualitative study were willing/interested and there may be geographic differences based on state processes and also remoteness and other characteristics. However, this study was aimed to ascertain the feasibility and also potential enablers and barriers to implementation as pilot work before scaling up the program to other contexts and settings. Further, since the GPs were from two arms of a wider cRCT program, we are confident that the responses are generalisable to the contexts in which this study was conducted and the leanings from this pilot work could still inform dissemination of the program to other contexts and settings. For example, some of the findings observed in this study regarding barriers and enablers may be related to local issues at the study sites in either NSW (South-West Sydney) and/or Victoria (metropolitan Melbourne) only, other issues relating to the process, technology and funding are relevant to other parts of Australia and even globally. Further, the findings are consistent with previous research in Australia and internationally about the use of developmental and autism-specific screening tools [