Page 86 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 4
group, for the family network (p = .003) and the network of acquaintances (p = .019); while participants with ASD saw their network member more often as the main initiator compared to the REF group (for family not significant; for acquaintances p = .040). Participants with ID described more often than the REF group that neither they themselves nor the network member explicitly took the initiative; for acquaintances this difference was significant, p = .031. No other significant differences were found.
4.3.2 Functional characteristics of the social networks
In this section we analyzed the differences in the functional characteristics of the social network of the three groups. Table 4 displays these functional characteristics, namely affection, connection, preference and practical/ informational support. The three groups differed with respect to (a) affection for family and professionals; (b) connection to family; (c) preference for professionals; and (d) practical and informational support from acquaintances. Post hoc comparisons showed the following results. Regarding affection, participants with ID assigned significantly lower scores to their family than the participants in the REF group, p = .017, and higher scores to their professionals, p = .003; this latter was also true for participants with ASD compared to the REF group, p = .005. Next, participants with ID appeared to feel less connected to their network members compared to both participants in the REF group (p = .001) and participants with ASD (p = .025) and in particular to their family in comparison with participants in the REF group (p = .035). Moreover, both participants with ID and ASD had a higher preference for the contact of their professionals, compared to the participants in the REF group, respectively p = .009 and p = .020. Finally, the participants in the ASD group perceived less practical/informational support from their acquaintances compared to the REF group, p = .039; the difference between participants with ID and ASD with regard to this was only marginally significant, p = .053.
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