Page 58 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 3
being, social well-being and housing satisfaction (Hoekman, Douma, Kersten, Schuurman, & Koopman, 2001). Five response categories ranging from very dissatisfied to very satisfied are available and made clear using emoticons (i.e. smileys). Higher scores reflect a higher QOL.
For purposes of the present study, a minor change was made: the smiley response possibilities were positioned along a ‘stairway’ just as for the other instruments. This was done in order to facilitate comprehension but also establish some uniformity across the measurement instruments. The internal consistency of the IDQOL-16 in previous studies has been found to vary from .85 for adults with ID (Hoekman et al., 2001) to .83/.84 for proxies of children with ID (Cram & Nieboer, 2012) and .74 for adults over 50 years of age with moderate to mild ID (van Puyenbroeck & Maes, 2009). The internal consistency of the IDQOL-16 in the present study was .74.
3.2.3 Procedure
The scientific and ethics committee from Dichterbij, one of the seven organizations participating in this research, approved the present study. The support staff from the organizations participating in the study were next asked to invite clients who met the inclusion criteria to take part. In total 33 clients agreed to participate and provided written consent. Interviews were next conducted by trained undergraduates at the HAN University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.
At the start of each interview, the participant was informed about the aims of the study that all responses would be handled without name and that it was possible to stop the interview at any point. To enhance the reliability of data collection, we used an interview protocol and accompanying instruction manual (van Asselt-Goverts et al., 2012). The interviewers were trained on the use of the protocol and how to conduct an interview. All of the interviews were voice recorded, and the responses of the participants were also noted during the interviews.
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