Page 56 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 3
the care organization; many of them got job coaching as well and some participants were consulting a specialist, such as a psychiatrist. The average age of the participants was 28.88 years. Approximately half of the participants had a partner (n = 17), but not all lived together with the partner. Most of the participants were living alone (n = 23); others were living with their partners (n = 7) and/or children (n = 3). With regard to employment and work outside the house: 78.79% of the participants were employed or had activities outside the home during the day; the remaining 21.21% were either unemployed, unable to work and/or responsible for the housekeeping at home. The social networks of the participants varied from four to 28 members (M = 14.21). Almost half of the network members were family members (42.65%) and 32.84% of the network members were acquaintances (i.e. friends, colleagues, neighbours and other acquaintances). The remaining 24.51% of the network members were professionals. The number of informal (not paid) network members ranged from two to 24 (M = 11.21). One of the 33 participants in this study had no family members; four had no acquaintances in their networks whatsoever. A more detailed description of the social networks, including details of their size, has been previously reported (van Asselt-Goverts et al., 2013).
3.2.2 Measures
Maastricht Social Network Analysis
The structural and functional characteristics of the social networks of the participants in this study were mapped using the Maastricht Social Network Analysis (MSNA) (Baars, 1994). Important network members are listed to get started and can include: family (i.e. partner, children, parents, brothers/ sisters and other family members); acquaintances (i.e. friends, colleagues, neighbours and other acquaintances) and professionals (e.g. support staff, therapists, social workers, coaches). A number of structural characteristics (e.g. accessibility, length of the relationship, frequency of contact) are then scored for each member of the network. Each relationship is also then scored using a five-point scale for a number of functional characteristics – namely the supportiveness of the contact operationalized along four dimensions: affection (e.g. feeling safe and secure with the person, loving the person), connection (e.g. liking the same things), preference (e.g. preference for contact with the person, liking the contact) and practical/informational support (e.g. being helped by the person when you don’t know something or aren’t able to do something).
54