Page 88 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 4
Table 5 Satisfaction with the social network (%) of the ID, ASD and REF groups compared
ID
ASD
REF
χ2
p
Network total
Dissatisfied 3.8
30.358 .000
5.457 .222
9.456 .043
6.309 .141
Neutral
Satisfied Family
Dissatisfied Neutral Satisfied
Acquaintances Dissatisfied Neutral Satisfied
Professionals Dissatisfied Neutral Satisfied
Wishes
30.0 0.0 23.1 26.7 2.4 73.1 43.3 97.6
7.1 10.0 2.4 25.0 33.3 16.7 67.9 56.7 81.0
7.4 23.3 2.6 14.8 20.0 10.5 77.8 56.7 86.8
11.1 8.0 0.0 7.4 24.0 26.9 81.5 68.0 73.1
Table 6 presents the wishes with respect to the total network and with respect to the networks of family, acquaintances and professionals separately. The wishes were expressed in response to the open-ended question ‘What would make your network one step higher?’, which was asked with regard to the total network, family, acquaintances, and professionals separately. A large number of the participants did not answer this question or reported having no specific wishes and were excluded from these analyses; for the ID group n = 17; for the ASD group n = 7 and for the REF group n = 9. The reasons for not replying were stated as they were already satisfied, could not come up with something during the interview or found the question too difficult to answer. As Peter2, a 33 years old man with ASD said:
Look, that’s just how it is. I don’t need that many friends ... I don’t need to know everybody.
As can be seen in Table 6, the wishes with respect to family and acquaintances differed between the three groups. First, regarding the family, people with ID wished more frequent contact, while people with ASD desired
2 For the sake of anonymity, pseudonyms are used.
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