Self-determination, social abilities, and the quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities
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Background. Self-determination has been broadly defined as the capacity to choose and have those choices be determinants of one?s own actions (Deci & Ryan 1985). It is evident when people act as the primary causal agent in their lives, make decisions regarding their quality of life and are free to make and experience the outcomes of their choices without coercion, obligation, or any external influence (Soresi et al. 2003; Wehmeyer 1996a). The international literature has documented that self-determination is impacted by environmental factors including living or working in more or less restrictive settings (Stancliffe et al. 2000; Tossebro 1995; Wehmeyer & Bolding 1999) and with intraindividual factors, including intelligence level, age, gender, and adaptive behaviour (Soresi et al. 2004; Wehmeyer & Garner 2003). In addition, self-determination has been associated with adaptive social skills (Nota & Soresi 2004; Soresi & Nota 2004) and found to contribute to a person?s quality of life (Lachapelle et al. 2005; Neely-Barnes 2005; Wehmeyer & Schwartz 1998). This study sought to examine the relationship between personal characteristics, self determination, social abilities, and the environmental living situations of people with intellectual disabilities.
Method. The study involved 141 people with intellectual disabilities residing in Italy. Health-care professionals and social workers who had known participants for at least one year completed the Evaluation of Self-Determination Instrument (ESI; Soresi et al. in press), the Evaluation of the Quality of Life (EQLI; Nota & Soresi 2002; Nota et al. in press; Soresi et al. 2003), and the Social Ability Evaluation Scale for Adults with Mental Retardation (VAS-ARM; Marchesini & Nota 2001) to assess participants? self-determination capacity, quality of life, and social skills, respectively.
Results. The ANOVA conducted to verify if different levels of intellectual impairment were associated with different degree of self-determination, social abilities, and quality of life determined, as expected, that participants with more severe intellectual disability show the lowest levels of self-determination, quality of life, and social abilities. Discriminant function analysis conducted to examine the degree to which IQ score, age, self determination, and social abilities predicted membership in groups formed based on living arrangement, and on quality of life status showed that (a) individuals attending day centers were distinguished from those living in institutions in that they were younger, showed greater autonomy of choice and self-determination in their daily activities; (b) basic social skills and IQ score predicted membership in the high or low QoL groups; and (c) the IQ score predicted membership in the high or low self-determination groups. The MANOVA conducted to examine gender and age level differences on self-determination found gender differences; female had higher self-determination scores than males.
Conclusions. These findings contribute to an emerging knowledge base pertaining to the role of intraindividual and environmental factors in self-determination and quality of life. In general, the study replicated findings pertaining to the relative contribution of intelligence to self-determination and quality of life, added information about the potential contribution of social abilities, and pointed to the potentially important role of opportunities to make choices as a particularly important aspect of becoming more self-determined, at least in the context of residential settings.
