Page 38 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 2
with family, because it was obvious that people knew their family members their entire lives.
Finally, to answer the third research question mean scores on the different functional characteristics (i.e. four levels: affection, connection, preference and practical/informational support) for each group of network members were also analyzed as a within-subjects factor.
2.3 Results
2.3.1 Structural characteristics of the social networks
Size and composition
The social networks of the participants varied from four to 28 members (mean 14.21). Almost half of the network members were family members (42.65%): partners and children (4.51%), parents (10.59%), brothers and sisters (8.39%) and other family (19.16%). Acquaintances constituted 32.84% of the network members: friends (19.91%), colleagues (5.10%), neighbours (1.83%) and other acquaintances from, for example, a sports club (6.01%). The remaining 24.51% of the network members were professionals, including support staff, general practitioners and coaches. One of the 33 participants in this study had no family members; four had no acquaintances in their networks whatsoever.
Demographic characteristics and accessibility
Table 1 gives detailed information on the demographic characteristics of the members of the social networks (e.g. age, civil status, work situation, IQ) along with their accessibility, operationalized in terms of living in the same town as the participant or not. Relative to acquaintances, family members were more frequently older than 35 years, t(27) = 3.549, p = .001. The family members also had a partner more frequently than the acquaintances, t(27) = 3.977, p < .001. Looking at the work situations of the network members, approximately 75% of the partners, friends, neighbours and other acquaintances were employed or had activities outside the home during the day; for parents, this percentage was lower – possibly due to their age; for siblings, the percentage was higher (90.00%). The difference in work situation between family and acquaintances in general, however, was not significant, t(27) = -1.756, p = .090.
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